I have to stop reading polling data or I am going to have a stroke. Why would women vote for the Republicans for the first time since they started polling that question in 1982? Are they into being curbstomped? How can 75% of the electorate have no opinion of the man they are about to make third-in-line to the president? Isn’t who you want as Speaker of the House kind of central to who you vote for? How can the people overwhelmingly think that the Republicans are better at balancing the budget? Did they not live through the Bush years?
I know everyone has a theory about the polls and why they are the way they are, but the biggest problem we have is a simple lack of civil engagement. People need to find the time and the brain cells to give a damn. I do my best to try to help people understand how Washington works. I know very well that even people who are trying to be informed are getting deluged with misinformation. But it’s just pathetic how little people know.
This is why I just can’t figure out the polls period, and why I’m having trouble believing them.
I mean, SUSA has Rand Paul winning by 20 points among 18-34 year olds, and in Louisville by a great margin.
Wtf? This makes NO sense, and prior to this election, I didn’t find SUSA to be that bad.
So Iunno what’s going on, but either people are really stupid and ignorant, or the polls aren’t hitting the right people.
Only white women, booman, only white women.
But of course, that’s what “women” just means, in America.
There’s quarterbacks, and then there’s black and hispanic quarterbacks, in America.
lols
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Wasn’t there a Pew poll recently that found only something like 16% of Americans can name a single Supreme Court justice? We cannot force people to value democracy.
Tell me honestly. Did the president deviate in any substantial way from what I’ve been telling my blogging colleagues over the last two years? Did he not just make every argument I’ve made in substantially the same way I’ve made it?
It’s actually kinda creepy.
I am just glad that someone asked him about the Puke obstructionism and at what point is enough, enough.
I do wish someone would have asked him about Shirley Sherrod and why they would even bother give Beck/Breitbart any credence to begin with.
You nailed it. It’s like Obama is a healthy mature adult.
Josh indicated that there is something very screwed up in a recent PA poll. I quote “Here’s one number that sort of threw me. As of Saturday, from the first 5 days of polling: “Most polled were 40 years old or older. Only 13 percent were 18 years old to 39 years old.”
13 % ??? WTF kind of a sample is that? As a statistician, I will tell you that this is what statisticians call a “total fuck-up” as a sample.
I think that there is a vast over-reach going on right now. We need to get people out to the polls. I am calling people every night.
It’s very odd. I’m finding a lot of people on the phones that I can bring back into the fold with some strong arguments, but it’s like they haven’t heard anybody making the argument for the Dems for a while, so they’ve just forgotten! Very frustrating, especially because I know that for every person I sway there are so many still out there.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
People know a great deal. It’s just that what they know is overwhelmingly wrong, and often not even internally coherent.
How many studies have there been in recent years now indicating that the more people watch TV, the less well-informed they are on current affairs? This was a constant theme of the Bush years, and I’d bet it’s even more true now.
Your average bagger considers themselves very well informed, of course, by Fox and the echo chamber. But even more traditional legacy media is a huge problem. The only reason we even fault the Obama administration for poor messaging is that word of what they’ve actually done doesn’t get out to general audiences otherwise, because all such media do is usually false “balancing,” stenography, and insta-controversies about nothing. Thus, for example, the only reason it’s Obama’s “fault” that nobody knows he gave them a tax cut is because the fracking media can’t be bothered reporting it unless it comes out of someone’s mouth. (And even then, it’s a “claim,” subject to the filter of an audience’s predisposed beliefs.)
I’m not sure voters are any less engaged now than they’ve ever been. But between the collapse of real reporting (and the advent of media, Internet and otherwise, that specializes in affirming what people already want to hear), and the oceans of paid media that are now the source of a lot of peoples’ election “information,” it takes a lot of time and energy to see through the BS. That, and the willingness to do so.
Money goes a long way and prior planning for the pre-ordained GOTP resurgence would not have overlooked the multi-dimensional value in reinforcing Rasmussen’s narrative driving function.
The ridiculous gap between LV and RV results is a red flag. The Kochtopus is ruthless.
Will he — or she — let me keep my guns?
Will he see that at Jesus’ name every knee will bend?
Will it scare colored people, and Mexicans, and fags?
Will it piss liberals off?
Hand me that ballot!
You’re not dealing with people who are rationally calculating advantage and disadvantage.
How can 75% of the electorate have no opinion of the man they are about to make third-in-line to the president?
The problem here is polling data.
People in the US believe in a secret ballot. Some don’t tell anybody else ever who they voted for. Some also lie about what their decision is.
The only people for whom having no opinion about John Boehner is a concern are the people of OH-08. If there are 75% of those people who have no opinion about Boehner, that means they are either ashamed or conflicted about what they are going to do. But that is a national statistic, isn’t it? And using national statistics to predict local races has no statistical logic behind it. Pollsters have to make monumental assumptions each time in order to get the results good enough to look presentable. In truth a lot of the rule-of-thumb assumptions of pollsters are false.
There is only one way to successfully forecast a midterm election. Conduct individual polls in each Congressional district for the House candidates and each stste for the Senate candidates. No one, absolutely no one is doing this.
It is pathetic how little people know about our system of government, but it is the result of high school civics courses tending toward an inoculation approach instead of an education approach. There is more concern about preventing folks getting socialist ideas (thus the combination of civics and economics) than there is about understanding in practical terms how government works, how campaigns are run, and how campaign propaganda works. And it doesn’t help at all that most of the folks who find their way into teaching civics are either coaches or conservative ideologues. And that school boards regularly persecute teachers with more liberal views, whether they teach civics or physics.
Save your sanity. Stop reading polls between now and Tuesday night.
The stupid is out there, but so are a lot of folks trying to break through the stupid.
And one of the issues in an economy in recession is that people do not have the time for civic engagement; even searching out a news source free of misinformation is a major chore, as monumental as finding good investment information is. And the latter is why individual investors tend to get taken by the stock market, dominated by large investment firms with computerized analysis of companies and trade order programs. There is strong information asymmetry between the big guys and the little guys.
We only have two parties, which we are allowed to consider voting for. If one disappoints you vote for the other. Obama supports unpopular things like bank bailouts and insurance mandates, not to mention he supports the corrupt foreclosure process. This is too be expected. Calling people stupid changes nothing.
Kentucky’s a conservative state. It is shocking conway is doing as well as he is. College students are not the children of the middle and working class like they used to be 15 or 20 years ago. That neolibs and libertarians like Obama and Paul are liked by them is not surprising.
teh stupid became crystsl clear to me when Maddow was up in Alaska the other day. She came upon some Miller supporters on the street and asked them what their deal was, why they supported Miller etc.
Immediately they began talking about Eric Holder. Rachel told them Holder has never been an elected official (duh). They felt Holder was going to take away their guns. So she asked them what had Holder ever done to make them think that (you know-those pesky little specifics). Of course they then started stumbling around for an answer. The woman said she couldn’t think of anything right then but she was sure he would take away their guns.
So much for the low information voter. More like the NO information voter or WRONG information voter.
It’s pretty simple really. We’ve become the stupidest nation on earth. Not the most poorly educated, we can still look to places such as parts of Africa for that, but the fundamentally stupidest.