The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.
Another Twin City precinct found another problem with their count of Senate ballots on election day. According to this article, Minneaplis has come up 133 ballots short in their recount, of the ballots that they recorded on election night. The Election Director came up with another lame excuse for how that “could” have happened and said she would verify the new numbers with Secretary of State. The reduction of the 133 ballots provided Coleman with a net pick up of 44 votes (apparently Franken had a 44 vote advantage in the 133 nonexistent ballots).
Minnesota has consistently been in the top 5 states of highschool graduation rates. It is similarly rated for college graduates. Apparently none of the folks in these “oops precincts” have accplished either of those mile stones.
You may or may not remember John Ziegler or his poll and video of Obama voters. For those of you who have short attention spans and don’t want to click back to the archives, Ziegler interviewed a dozen Obama voters right after they stepped out of the voting booth and asked them some basic current civics questions such as which party had control of Congress going into the election. He also commissioned a Zogby poll asking 512 Obama supporters those same questions. Needless to say, they blew chunks on that.
Also needless to say, the Nutroots were incensed, and claimed it was a misleading push poll designed to embarrass them. Ziegler offered to fund a follow-up poll involving McCain voters, and after getting turned down by Zogby, he went to Wilson Research Strategies and reran the poll among both McCain and Obama supporters, with an additional question on the Keating Five and a change on the “started his/her political career at an ex-terrorist’s house” question to name Bill Ayers specifically. The results are, shall we say, even more embarrassing for the Nutroots, at least among those that care about an educated populace.
Like everybody else, I’ll focus on the pre-election Congressional control question (pages 19-21 on the crosstabs), but run with something that hasn’t exactly been explored elsewhere. First off, let’s review the actual question (“Before this election, which political party controlled both houses of Congress?”), and the responses allowed (I assume in order because there isn’t a notation in the methodology to rotate, Republican, Democrat, neitherRepublican and Democrat were rotated with neither third; see Chris Wilson’s comment below). Among all 1000 participants, 51.4% got this correct by saying “Democrat”, 35.2% got it 100% wrong by saying “Republican”, 4.5% got it wrong by saying “Neither”, 8.5% admitted they didn’t know, and 2 of them refused to answer the question.
Let’s first delve into the Obama vs McCain voters that everybody else ran with. The designed split of 53.0% Obama voters versus 46.0% McCain voters is close enough to reality to run with. McCain voters got it right to the tune of 62.8% Democratic control, 26.5% Republican control, 6.1% “don’t know”, 4.1% neither, and 1 refusal. Obama voters got it wrong to the tune of 43.0% Republican control, 41.3% Democratic control, 10.6% “don’t know”, 4.9% neither, and 1 refusal.
Now, let’s deviate from the “blame the media” game everybody else is playing because while viewers of CNN and the broadcast networks couldn’t create a majority correct, they did manage a plurality. Instead, let’s take a look at the partisan splits on that question. This poll had a party split of 21.9% “strong Republican”, 10.1% “not-so-strong Republican” (or “soft” for short; for a 32.0% total “Republican”), 26.7% “independent/other”, 9.4% “not-so-strong Democrat”, 29.5% “strong Democrat” (for a 39.0% total “Democrat”), and 2.3% refusal (not reflected in the crosstabs). The highest percentage of those who got this question correct was among “strong Republicans”, at 65.8%. “Soft Republicans” were next at 60.4% correct, which gave the Republican universe a total of 64.1% correct. “Independents” were next at 55.1% correct. “Soft Democrats” could only manage a plurality correct of 45.1%. Worst were the “strong Democrats”, where only 36.6% got the question correct, and a near-majority of 48.5% got it 100% wrong.
If the GOP is “The Stupid Party”, what does that make the Democratic Party? No, you Lefties can’t appropriate “morons”, We AoSHQ Morons have already done that.
Revisions/extensions (2:39 pm 12/3/2008) – Chris Wilson, CEO of Wilson Research Strategies, points out that the first two prompted answers of the Congressional control question (Republican, Democratic) were rotated.
R&E part 3 (11:03 pm 12/3/2008) – I thought I had corrected the link to the question list. Guess that’s what I get for assumptions. It is now pointing to the correct file.
Senator Chambliss has been called as the winner of the runoff election in Georgia. This will give the Republicans at least 41 votes, on paper, in the Senate.
While the vote totals appear to be substantially lower than the general election, they still managed to get about 55% of the folks to return for a second time. 55% is a pretty good overall return rate for a runoff. However, the two candidates fared very differently compared to the average.
I’m working off of numbers from the Secretary of State as of about 10 PM. At that time, Chambliss had about 64% of the general election total while Martin only received about 50% of his general election total. 95% of the precincts had reported in those numbers. If this difference holds, and I suspect it will generally based on the precincts left to report, I’ve got the following questions questions:
93% of blacks voted for Martin when Obama was on the ballot. They accounted for 56% of Martin’s vote total. Did they come out and support an older white man when there wasn’t a black candidate on the ballot?
With the Democrats within reach of the magic 60 number in the Senate, how many folks switched from Martin to Chambliss?
Chambliss and Martin split the 29 and under group in the general election. It will be interesting to see whether that group was able to show up a second time this year.
Sarah Palin made several campaign appearances for Chambliss. By all accounts the events were very well attended. How much, or was she a factor in generating turn out for Chambliss?
Do you remember how the MSM was carrying on about how the special elections for Mississippi and Illinois told us that conservatism was dead rather than the fact that Republicans know how to run crappy candidates. Will the MSM be running stories about how Obama has lost his coat tails?
This and more I’d like to see. I haven’t found any exit polls yet. When I do, you’ll be the first to know!
Tim Russert had been the most of Meet The Press for 17 years until his untimely death in June. While strongly aligned with the Democratic party, Russert aggressively questioned Democrats and Republicans alike. He did his job so well that if you didn’t know about his previous work for Senator Moynihan and Governor Coumo, you would never have known his political leanings. Russert had a reputation as having the toughest interview regardless of your party affiliation.
Apparently six months is what the GE management handbook says is the official mourning time for the last person in your employ who was able to exhibit any level of professional integrity.
Based on reports by AP and others, David Gregory will be announced as the permanent host of “Meet the Press.” Yes, THAT David Gregory!
The David Gregory who made this appearance on Imus:
And the David Gregory who provided this professional insight when Helen Thomas asked him why politics had become so polarized:
While NBC has been in an integrity coma since Russert’s death, there was hope of a reawakening or at least a stabilization, with a permanent host who would not replicate Russert’s style but honor his intellectual drive. If Gregory is named the permanent host, how long before the plug gets pulled?
