Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Why RoJo Is Supposedly Leading In The Polls

From the New York Times:
But the Wisconsin electorate he faces seems to have lost its progressive streak and become more like other Midwestern states. Several polls have shown that the number of likely voters who consider themselves conservative has risen from a quarter of the electorate to nearly half. The misinformation and simplistic solutions propounded by talk radio and the Republican Party are having an effect even in a state that preferred Mr. Obama by 14 points two years ago.
Of course, along with the misinformation being spread out like so much bovine excrement is whether RoJo is really leading by a comfortable margin.

Not all the polls agree on that. And given his recent total flop at doing a money bomb, I don't see his support being as great or as strong as squawk radio would have us believe.

6 comments:

  1. I suspect some of this comes from the cell phone gap in most polling. Pew actually just released a study about this that's worth a read.

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  2. I think there may be more recent poll stories than the June 22nd one you linked to...

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  3. I know that there was a more recent report that had them both at 48, but I couldn't find it.

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  4. What does this matter, and why do we put so much effort into reading these chicken bones? We're all interested in who wins, of course. And I get that politics is largely a game of expectations.

    But what does the horse race tell us? If Ron Johnson's ahead - which he very well may be - does it change the fact that he's an amoral moron? Sure, majority opinion and levels of "support" is how we keep score. But it doesn't confer legitimacy in and of itself. The supposedly wise crowd f#@ks up all the time.

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  5. Capper- I've mentioned this as well. The polls don't measure young people and oversample conservatives. The CNN poll that has RoJO +8 also has an 18-34 age cohort so small it's listed as "N/a". In a state that has about 20% of voters consistently in that age range, and a group that'll go about 2-1 for Feingold.

    http://jakehasablog.blogspot.com/2010/10/polls-still-biased-feingold-barrett.html

    Now the GOPs can hope the electorate is all old white conservatives (and they'll try to make it so with vote caging), but it won't be so, and that's why Russ and Barrett are in a lot better shape than Nate Silver and co. think.

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  6. Nevertheless, key is getting these people out. Find time.

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