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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (666603)	8/10/2012 4:33:57 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1572186

CNN Is Just Making Up Poll Numbers Now by Mike Flynn 10 Aug 2012 The poll CNN and British market research firm ORC International released Thursday afternoon is so screwy and raises so many questions that they might as well be doing it intentionally. If CNN is already resorting to these kinds of tricks before the conventions have even started, it's going to be a very long campaign. First let me say, with less than three months to go in this campaign, can we please stop polling the political views of "adults", rather than "registered voters." We really should be moving soon to a "likely voter" screen, but I'll take "registered voters" for now. Knowing the political views of unregistered voters is worthless at the height of an election campaign and serves no real purpose but to give the Democrats an advantage. Nate Silver at the New York Times has estimated that polls of adults are biased towards Democrats by around 7 points. CNN does at least test an Obama-Romney match-up among registered voters. It trumpets across its news page that, among registered voters, Obama is leading Romney 52-45. Looking deeper into the poll, however, we learn that these numbers include "leaners." In other words 52% of registered voters either support Obama or are "leaning" towards him. Now, there is nothing wrong with documenting voters who are "leaning" towards a candidate. But, you know, you have to document it! Knowing the percentage of voters who support a candidate and those who are currently "leaning" towards that candidate is what we call relevant information. For example, if 50% of voters say they support Obama while 2% are leaning towards him that tells us one thing. If, however, 45% support him and 7% are leaning, that is kind of something else entirely, right? If you are going to combine two different numbers to get a final result, you kind of have to show your math. CNN obviously has this information, so why didn't they publish it? CNN takes another questionable turn when they produce a sub-sample of Republicans for a poll on potential VP picks. They report their sample is 419 Republicans and Independents leaning Republican. Wait, what? How many of each, exactly? You can see how that information might make a difference in the results. Independents who lean Republican are not exactly the party base. If, however, they make up a majority of CNN's sample, it might not accurately reflect the views of the base GOP. Again, CNN, you have to show your math. At least this sub-sample gives us a small glimpse of the partisan make-up of the poll. Naturally, CNN doesn't provide any information on this directly. According to the sub-sample, though, Republicans and GOP-leaning Independents make up about 45% of CNN's overall sample of registered voters. (Hey, that's Romney's vote share!) So, around 55% are Democrat or Democrat-leaning independents. By this, not only is the poll a heavily skewed D+10, but Obama is underperforming at only 52%. Maybe there is some large number of Independent voters in the poll who lean neither way, but we don't know, because CNN won't tell us. At this late stage in the campaign, if you don't show your work on a poll, then I'm just going to conclude you're making it up. After all, at the end of June, CNN and ORC International conducted a poll and found that economic optimism was "skyrocketing." How is that result holding up?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (666603)	8/10/2012 4:34:14 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572186

Larry Sabato just shot those polls down, BTW, saying, in short, "I don't believe those polls that say Obama is ahead by 9 points..."

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (666603)	8/10/2012 4:35:52 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1572186

The latest Gallup tracking poll, which has the two candidates in a dead heat at 46-46 percent. Rasmussen, an automated poll that usually leans Republican, has Romney ahead 47-43 in its daily tracking.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (666603)	8/10/2012 4:43:16 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572186

Joe Soptic? Meet the Obama Bus Townhall.com ^ \| August 9, 2012 \| Jeff Carter Joe Soptic thought he was doing good by Obama. He thought, “I support the candidate and I am flattered they want me to do an advertisement for him.” Joe, I know what the operatives told you. They told you that you were going to put Obama over the top. They said, “Your story will determine the outcome of the election.” They called you, they told you they’d cover for you. They said they’d put you on television in front of a friendly anchor and make you look great. You might have even had a short chat with people you looked up to, like David Plouffe or David Axelrod. They reassured you that it would go great. You were going to be a hero. The dominoes were lined up. All the bloggers and journolists were alerted. This was going to be your magic moment. That all stopped as soon as everyone fact checked the ad. Joe, I feel for you. Looking back on it, you might have thought, “The ad wasn’t shot that way”. It may have been edited. Once you told your story and the film was in the can, you lost all control. Now, you have to face everyone. You will relive your beloved wife’s death over and over again. The right wing and left wing media scrutiny will be awful. Paparazzi looking at your private life. It sucks. No ordinary citizen should have to go through what Joe is going through now. My hope is that they will just leave you alone. My gut tells me that Joe Soptic is just like you and me. Ordinary. Provided a middle class life for his family and had a marriage end tragically when his wife got cancer. I don’t care about his politics even though we probably don’t agree. I bet Joe would be a great neighbor and a nice guy to have a beer with, watch a game with. Except Joe got personally played by Obama. At least when a candidate screws up, like Dukakis in his tank, he does it to himself. Joe is a pawn in the grand scheme. He was manipulated. He’s just a cog in a machine and now he is going to get run over. This is how the elite big government types treat the middle class. They are just there to be used and discarded. Now that the ad has blown up in Obama’s face, watch the campaign throw old Joe under the bus. They will run him over. That’s what happens when the middle class puts its faith in big government instead of in their neighbors and themselves. They become discards. Joe will always be “that guy” now. He lives in infamy on YouTube. Years from now political scientists will do case studies about Joe. If Obama loses the election, Joe might get the blame. You know Obama would never blame himself for losing. How low can the Obama campaign go? Wait until they get done with Joe. You will see how low they can go. Because its not the welfare of the people big government types care about. They don’t really care about me and you. They don’t care about Joe. Lip service is paid, but it’s only to get a vote. The only true worry they have is their control over the levers of power, and the pocketbooks of their friends.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (666603)	8/10/2012 4:52:17 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1572186

Censorship rears its ugly head in California Senate Sacramento Bee ^ \| 8/10/12 \| Dan Walters Let's not mince words about what the state Senate's Democratic leader did Wednesday. It was self-serving censorship, the sort of thing that one expects from tinpot dictators, not from those who fancy themselves to be progressive civil libertarians. Someone acting for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg suddenly cut off cable television access to a legislative hearing to air facts and arguments about pending ballot measures. The Senate Governance and Finance Committee called the hearing – as required by law – into three tax increases (Propositions 30, 38 and 39) and altering the state's budgetary procedures (Proposition 31). As it opened, the committee's chairwoman, Democrat Lois Wolk, said she hoped that the testimony would help voters make reasoned decisions about the highly controversial measures. But only the few people in the hearing room and those technologically savvy enough to tune into an Internet audio feed heard Wolk's words. Just before the hearing was to be telecast on the California Channel, a public affairs channel carried on most cable systems, somebody from the Senate told Cal Channel to cut it off. It's obviously bad business that Capitol politicians can control what the public sees of their activities. But this is an especially egregious example of manipulating that power for political purposes. It wouldn't take a Mars rocket scientist to figure out why Democrats didn't want the hearing to be broadcast. (Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...