Tuesday, 21 September 2004

Comments

Dear drunk chimp with sunglasses,

I agree with your posting that this will be a landslide. Bush is gonna slaughter Kerry and leave him in a burning pile of rumble.

Latest polls:

AP News: Bush 52%, Kerry 45%
CBS News: Bush 51%, Kerry 42%
Fox News Bush 46%, Kerry 42%

And the important Electoral College Votes, which typically eludes liberals and all those on the lower end of the Bell Curve such as Kerry and duckbrains like yourself:

Bush 291 votes, Kerry 200 votes, 47 toss-up votes.

Game over, boozer.

Come November 3rd, Kerry will return to groveling on his pink belly for his monthly allowance from Tersea and having his butler make him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Kerry is losing so many Gore states from 2000 that it's just a simple question of how bad he'll get reamed up the ass. Kerry certainly won't get 45.7% of the vote, which is what that jackass whimp Mike Dukasis got in 1988.

Bring on the landslide! Liberals and their pea-brained followers are gonna get crushed.

Oh Yeah!

Posted by: Unvarnished Truth | Sep 26, 2004 7:46:04 PM

heh.

Posted by: varnished tooth | Sep 27, 2004 2:43:46 AM

You're missing my point. What I'm saying is that pollsters, for the most part, are very rarely accurate. For example, those three polls you cite (AP, CBS, Fox) were all predicting uncontested Howard Dean primary wins back in December, and we all know how that turned out.

If you were to actually look into how these polls were conducted, you and your party wouldn't be so proud of yourselves. First of all, the polls are only talking to "likely voters", which are people who have voted in the last few elections. This does not take into account the overwhelming number of new voters who have been signing up in droves:

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis by the New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio -- primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods -- new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: In the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

Republicans are trying to psyche you out and make you think the election is already over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Also, as veteran pollster John Zogby revealed last week, Republicans are more heavily weighted in most of these polls than Democrats. Luckily, this imbalance is not representative of the American voting landscape.

There are VERY few polls which can be taken at face value. The poll I cited in my original post is one that I believe is an even-handed one, based on prior results and current methodology. If you can cite reasons for the viability of any of your treasured polls (one of which is within it's own margin of error), then I'm all ears. Otherwise I'll continue to be skeptical.

Tell you what - you keep hurling the lame insults and crowing about the latest polls and we'll keep quietly signing up new voters (250% more new Dems in Ohio). We'll see who has a better understanding of how to work the Electoral College.

PS - I'm not the "drunk chimp" this election cycle, pal.

Posted by: smooveJ | Sep 27, 2004 11:06:41 AM

hehehe -- "varnished tooth" -- i love it!

i'm all caught up with you now smoove -- work has calmed down, so i've had some time to read all of your recent posts. i'm glad the move went well and that glenys is having a blast visiting america!

i miss you guys!!!

Posted by: mel | Sep 27, 2004 12:38:02 PM

In rebuttal to your last post, I will say that two things are missing in your argument.

The first point is Likely Voters versus Registered Voters. The second point is understanding party identification (party ID).

Polling is more of an art than a science, but polling for likely voters has always had greater predicative value than polling for registered voters. A likely voter is determined by questions such as

“ Have you voted in the last presidential election?” “Did you vote in last two presidential elections?” “How many presidential elections have you voted in?” “Have you voted in the last local or state election? And so forth.

It is always those who vote who elect candidates, not no shows or deadbeats. Even the article takes into account how unreliable newly registered voters are:

“Donald P. Green, a professor of political science at Yale, said there was no reliable way to tell how many new voters would turn out at the polls, especially those from lower-income areas.

"Do you get 30 percent, or do you get 70 percent?" Green said. "To the extent that these new voters are on the radar screen of groups that have the kind of resources these groups have at their disposal, they might well turn out."

Secondly, various polling firms handle party ID differently. Zogby uses the exit polling from 2000 presidential election year for his polls. That gives you a breakdown of:

Dems : 39%
GOP: 35%
Independents: 26%

Other polling firms take into account the shifting party affiliations of likely voters. The trend in the past fours years is that the GOP has gained ground while the Dems have lost ground, and thus you have polls trying to poll a snapshot of what is likely to occur in 2004.

Still other polling firms, most notably Gallup, don’t slice their poll data into party ID columns, and just poll likely voters who answer their phone.

The best method to use for polling? Probably a mix of the second method described above and Gallup’s method. Zogby was wayoff in his 2000 Senatorial predications (see Colorado, for example) because he used 1996 party ID data. Times change.

Finally, here is a link to the RealClearPolitics site that tracks the battleground state polls. Rasmussen, SUSA, Mason-Dixon, local newspaper polls, and so forth.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry_sbys.html

Notice the predominate trend to Bush and how red these states are getting.

By the way, do you think Hillary Clinton will announce her presidential candidacy for 2008 before or after Kerry’s concession speech?

Posted by: Unvarnished Truth | Sep 28, 2004 3:46:02 PM

jesus guy, that wasn't much of a rebuttal. However your rehash of the standard definitions of RV's and LV's is greatly appreciated. Like you said, you can't know how many "deadbeats" will show up on election day. So wait a few weeks, and we'll see, won't we? The only poll that matters or means anything is on Nov. 2nd. Until then please continue to waste your time and sit on your ass speculating this useless shit. Meanwhile, Dem's will continue to Get out the Vote.

Posted by: varnished tooth | Sep 30, 2004 1:23:00 PM