Americans shifting to the right (Snowe and Collins not listening)
Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say their views are growing more conservative, according to a new Gallup poll:
Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven’t changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.
(Hat tip – Just Karl)
Are Republican senators paying attention? Apparently not.
Nutroots King Kos is gloating about the voting records of GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. According to CQ Politics roll call vote analysis of 2009 patterns:
Both Snowe and Collins voted 92 percent of the time with Obama and less than 50 percent of the time with their own party.
Who needs Al Franken with Republicans like these?
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They both voted Present, too?
When are these two going to follow Specter and make it official? There’s no point in counting them as Republicans if they are going to be solid Dem votes.
Further proof of the need for term limits.
I’ve been calling and calling their offices. They know my voice by now.
I encourage people who blog here and at Hot Air to let their voices be heard. Just tell the phone rep at their offices you’re from Portland (zip: 04101)
Snowe phone #s:
(202) 224-5344 (DC office)
(800) 432-1599 (ME only)
Collins:
(202) 224-2523 (DC office)
(207) 780-3575 (Portland office)
I’m getting on the phone again right now and calling both again. I should send them my freaking long distance phone bill.
snowe and collins are too stupid to know they are actually democrats.
Thanks for the info, Erin. I, and a group of friends will start calling both of them now.
They should remember their campaign promises. I am sure they made some reference to their conservatism, then. If they are so liberal/progressive-minded (what misnomers – they bastardaized the words, unless the latter means progressively worse!), they should change their party affiliations like Arlen Specter.
Thanks Tuesday. It only takes a few seconds to call, so get as many to do it as you can.
I would love to take a shot at running against either of them. Just a pipe dream of mine…
Obviously that doesn’t mean Mainers are getting more conservative. Have you seen the Obama favorables by region? He is overwhelmingly popular in the Northeast, over 80%. Also over 65% in the midwest and west, leaving the south (surprise!) as the only region that does not approve of the our first black president.
There – fixed it.
Snowe and Collins vote em out in 2010.
Sure would be good to know who will run against them now so we can form our opinions, possibly support.
hint to the pipedreamer #6…
That’s been the Republicans’ hobgoblin for some time now.
In 2004, when we gained a 55-45 majority in the Senate yet still acted like we were in the minority (e.g., “We’d like to reform Social Security, but the donks might call us names!”), I came to realize that to really enact a conservative agenda would require at least a 65-35 and more likely a 70-30 Republican majority in that body, taking into account the number of squishes who could be reliably counted on to find their way into the donks’ camp.
The Republicans are gradually weeding out the squishes, but the problem is that they’re being replaced with donks: either Genuine Donks over Republican cross-dressers, or with Stealth (i.e., “Blue Dog”) Donks who while campaigning for office pretend to be to the right of Republicans then march in lock-step with Hope-a-Dope after they’ve won.
The only way out of the wilderness in for the Republicans in the short term is for Donk Fever to run its course in this country — if it doesn’t kill us all first. Sadly, I’m not at all optimistic about that prognosis.
Here’s something from Snowe’s web page. If you’re having lunch, you may want to finish it now.
All of her stationary should have RINO imprinted in it as a watermark.
This pretty much tells you where her allegiance lies. And it’s not with the GOP.
Are Snowe and Collins not considered Models for Moderate Republicans? Please somebody convince them to quit pretending they are not LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE/LEFTIST democrats. Moderate Republicans are to blame for Pelosi and Reid being in charge of Congress since 2006.
Meg Whitman for CA gov, then President- Rah!
Hopefully, John Cornyn is hearing this, too.
I think that will be really difficult. They both have wide support in the state. Snowe is one of the most popular Senators in the country.
Also, Snowe isn’t up for reelection until 2012 and Collins in 2014.
So uphill battle for you.
I’m all for an injection of Palin-cillin!
Ah, Count on Rest Stop Septic tank to be the first to shout “Racism.”
snowe at one time was working off of two brain cells, guess the dominant one died and the subservient one has taken over what passes for a body.
I like the opening line of the Gallup poll article:
Should read “Because of the results of 2008 presidential election”.
The line also doesn’t take into consideration how hard Obama tried to portray himself as moderate, if not conservative. He was even invoking Reagan’s name.
At any rate, “voter’s remorse” with the Democrats & Obama just keeps growing, as most of us espected it would.
Those numbers fly in the face of recent polls I have seen. Would you like to provide us with credible links or details to support your numbers?
So, Olympia is living up to her “lofty” name? Perhaps, with Herculean effort, she can be deposed?
Maybe with continued heat from the national conservative Republicans, this Snowe job will melt…
Sorry.
I agree wholeheartedly. The majority of voters up here are living on welfare. So when you do the math, it’s job security for my two twit senators. Makes it hard for someone like myself who is trying to run a business on my own.
Maine is the highest taxed state in the nation. We are also the state with the lowest per capita income.
It’s aggrevating. My husband and I have started considering moving to Alaska.
Even if were so, it would only demonstrate how slow some people are to realizing and admitting they are wrong. It would show that folks in the south are less likely to get suckered by a politician. Quite a compliment.
And it would also prove Republican President Abraham Lincoln was right, since some out-of-touch east coast moonbats can be “fooled all the time”.
There are plenty of numbers of black people who either are growing disillusioned with the “one” (I think of black conservative Christians), or who, like me, never bought into his nonsense in the first place.
Now, since the election, most of my extended family are decidedly against Obama’s policies and a couple think the man himself is despicable.
You don’t have to be white and from “the south” to think the first (half) black president is a disaster for this country. Nice little cheap (and snide) shot, though.
zero is an affirmative action facade, and the sheep (snowe and collins included)see race as an issue so will fight to keep him from failing. zero is liberalism’s ultimate scam and the stakes are high so the lies and deception will continue.
According to the US Census bureau, Maine is 35th in pci. Not great, but hardly the worst (which are for the most part all in the south).
And I have not found any site where Maine’s tax burden is the highest. For sales, property, excise taxes, it seems to fall to the middle-high end. With one notable exception, it seems, for business tax burden, in which Maine is 49 out of 51 (DC included).
Always capitalize “South”, little boy.
Obama will be popular in the Northeast until the money runs out, then watch out.
purplepeep, I would agree that some (I would speculate most) are slow to admit they were wrong.
I just wanted RSS to substantiate his premise. The numbers he states seem to have come from lgm’s “math for liberals” class.
It would have been nice if the first president with some black blood in his/her veins had been competent, experienced and trustworthy. If Obama was supposed to have “advanced black interests” somehow, he instead more likely will have set such interests back a 100 years by the time he’s done. That’s the real shame.
I doubt the validity of those numbers but no matter. I’m confident plenty of those unemployed union workers in the Northeast and Midwest will start coming around, especially when they start seeing their heating bills double if Cap and Tax gets through the Senate. Just like there were a class of voters called Reagan Democrats, there will soon be another one called Obama former Democrats. At which point Dems will insinuate that racism is at the heart of their opposition.
1+1=5 1/3. If you disagree then you must be a racistnazifacisthomophobe.
Here are the numbers from daily kos, who were dead on for the election.
I said it once, I’ll say it again.
Snowe and Collins are Democrat moles in the GOP caucus.
If anyone had nads, they’d hold a caucus meeting and vote them out. Losing them to the Dem caucus is no loss, they vote with them anyway.
Anybody remember Lincoln Chaffee, who inherited his father’s Senate seat. When he was defeated in 2006, he admitted he was a Democrat, and said he didn’t switch to the Marxist caucus because the GOP had the majority then and he could “influence” (read: sabotage) Republican policy more from their caucus.
I’ll send money to individual Republicans running for the Senate, but as long as the two Maine moles aren’t booted, and the RNSCC picks the RINO over the conservative a year ahead of the primary, not a freaking penny.
Latest demographic breakdown from gallup of job pproval. Not quite the same as favorable/unfvorable but close enough.
LOL. I was just having some fun with imaginary numbers. Even Algore could come up with his own special variety of “fuzzy” ones. On the other hand, he did invent the internet, making it possible for you and I to have our fun here. So I guess it all balances out.
RSS, you obviously missed the qualifier “credible” in my question to you!
It’s not Kos. It’s Research 2000, a legit polling firm that was one of the better pollsters (in terms of hitting the right numbers) in the last election cycle.
No, McCain and Graham and Voino are “moderate Republicans”. A lot of wrong votes on crucial issues, but have something like center-right principles, and vote with the caucus more often than they vote against it.
AKA, they are squishes. One should, IMHO, oppose them hard in any primary, but they are almost certainly better than their Demonratic/Marxist opponent.
Coleman was a squish, but if the GOP picks up a couple more Senate seats in 2010 (possible, even defending more seats), considering the hardcore RINOs, Coleman may have made the difference on cloture votes between 59 and 60. The third party candidate sucked off just enough votes to make Coleman’s election day win close enough for the ACORN fraudsters and Demonratic party lawyers to steal.
Collins and Snowe are Democrats in the closet. Think of them as Super-Blue Dog Democrats.
Oppose them in the primaries, then feel free to vote third party, or stay home, or even vote Democrat, because losing them, like losing Chafee, is no loss at all to America.
The taxpaying voters of Minnesota.
“Here are the numbers from daily kos …”
He’s holding out on that until the Pravda poll numbers are published.
This is where tracking polls like Rasmussen’s come in handy – you see the daily trend charted from start to current, as you would look at the DJIA to get an idea of where things are headed.
“RSS, you obviously missed the qualifier “credible” in my question to you!”
Chappy, to believe that, you’d have to start with the premise that Kos wants to post polls that would detract from Obama. That’s just not realistic.
Normally, the Kos Kidz love the usually Obama-friendly Gallup folks. I just checked and there’s zero mention of the Gallup poll that’s the subject of this post – Kos shoots the messengers.
I’m calling BS to RSS’s poll. Here the poll of polls showing that even CNN had Obama at 61, not 63.
John,
Job approval is not the same as favorable/unfavorable.
Believe what? Research 2000, an independent pollster that did very well in the last cycle, is going to jeopardize the one commodity a pollster has, credibility, for the sake of one client? Don’t be daft. Their numbers may be on the high side toward Obama, but that does not mean they are invalid data points and is why real clear politics and pollster are useful for compiling ALL the data points.
Chap, RRS said “He is overwhelmingly popular in the Northeast, over 80%. Also over 65% in the midwest and west…”
He did not say anything about favorability ratings.
Okay, let’s look at that instead. Research 2000′s numbers seem a bit inflated.
Is this the same GOP that several resident Republican trolls keep saying we have to work with? The road to conservative success runs through the GOP? Sorry, I don’t see it. That road runs OVER the GOP. Go Sarah!!!
Okay. If you think that is an unacceptable synonym, then I guess you have a point…
yeah, it was a HuffPo poll of far-left libs. lol!
If a squatter takes up residence in your barn, do you abandon it and say you’ll build a new barn?
We have a perfectly good political party with all of the infrastructure in place. We just need to take it back. If the Kossacks can do it with the Democratic party, why can’t we do it with the GOP?
for the record, my post #49 (above) was made before I read RSS’s citation of the daily kos!!! ROTFLMAO!!!
But closer to the aggregate than Rassmussen.
Look, all polling firms have a house bias that good pollster analysts try to account for. Research 2000 does as well as Gallup, Survey USA, Rassmussen and god help me, Zogby. You can dismiss the firm because you don’t like the numbers or you can look at the pollster’s track record.
I needed a good laugh today…
Actually, I thing that it is rather nice that Al Franken won the election and will represent the great state of Minnesota in our congress. After all, voters voted and they got what they wanted. I am sure that the voters are looking forward to all the wonderful things that an experienced man like Al Franken can bring to them. His great knowledge of legislative procedures, his endless list of close friends in the senate, and his cunning, well documented expertise at solving problems will all quickly bring Minnesota to the forefront of “great American States”.
. . . . .
BWWAAAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAAA BWWWWWAAAAAHHHAAAAAA HAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAA. . .
Good luck Minnesota. You will need it.
Ummmmmm, the New Pravda already said he was moving too far, too fast down the road to communism as did the Communist Chinese who are heavily invested in US Debt.
They skew the aggregate. If you’ll look at the data before the KOS/R2000 polls, you’ll see that Rasmussen mirrors the trend almost exactly.
chapoutier said:
“Chappy, to believe that, you’d have to start with the premise that Kos wants to post polls that would detract from Obama. That’s just not realistic.”
A person would have to be incredibly naive not to take a skeptical view of “paid by” polls. I would say the same if you cited a poll bankrolled by the RNC. The bottom-line that keeps every company in business is “make the customer happy”. If they don’t come back with happy, shiny numbers the hired gun pollster loses the customer.
The technical term is “outlier”(more accurately in this case, a “paid outlier”). It’s to create a buzz that is not reflected in reality, nothing more. Pump up the kidz with some faux “good news for a change” to combat all the bad news. Macht nichts.
If you were looking at it from a dispassionate, cold angle you’d be wondering why the numbers are on the “high side”. We all prefer to believe that which would seem to confirm our beliefs, that’s just natural it’s-human type stuff.
But if you remember Contract Law 101, you’ll recall that material fact counts, personal opinion doesn’t.
In taking a step back you get the wider view. From everything I’ve seen poll-wise, including such things as “Is the country headed in the right/wrong direction” it doesn’t look that things are trending well for Obama and the Democrats. As I said you have to view things as you would the DJIA, over a period of time to get an idea of which way the wind is blowing and shifting.
I think a real “teller” is what I mentioned in my previous comment. Kos never failed to tout Gallup numbers before. They favored Obama/Democrats, so that’s obvious. Now that is changing and there’s not a peep about this Gallup poll. I just checked again now – but perhaps we’ll see some rarionalization as to why Gallup is “bogus” and assertions that their paid-for outlier “high side” poll is right. Which is OK – it’s all part of the game and it’s certainly more fun than contemplating “but what if what everything else is telling us is true?”.
Me, I know when somebody’s trying to blow sunshine up my drawers (esp. if I bankroll ‘em). School’s been out on that for some time now for me.
We here in ME have written and called them over and over, ad nauseum and they don’t care. They send out their responses that are nothing but the usual psychobabble. Some of us have even asked them to make it official and change the R after their names to a D.
Snowe has never held a position in the private or business sector. Her husband held the seat before her and when he passed away, she took over and never left.
Collins promised to only serve 2 terms and is now on her 3rd.
It’s no surprise that Obama is popular in the Northeast. It’s where Barney Frank, Jon Corzine, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy hail from. So don’t expect too much from voters in this neck of the woods.
If you want to rate it regionally, break it down more than they did. You’ll find limited geographic areas where Obama is actually popular.
Plus, give it time. His honeymoon is almost over. The press is actually calling him out on his claim that the stimulus package would cap unemployment at 8%. How inconvenient that it’s at 9.5% and climbing. Biden seems to be blaming Bush. No surprise there.
Excluding Research 2000, 3 off on the favorable and a whopping 8 off on the unfavorable is “almost exactly”?
and there’s this…
Great job O-Dopey.
FIFY
And as I recall, Rasmussen’s pre election numbers were almost dead on.
chap, agreed all most or all pollsters have bias. And Gallup would certainly be in the leftward category. Which is why their finding a rightward lean is significant.
Also prefer the RCP method of averaging polls, except that more polls seem to lean left. How is it that ABC and WaPo (your favorite rag!) are 8 points above the mean for Obama’s job approval? Polling at Columbia U’s student union perhaps.
Thanks and yep you’re right, Chap. I must be reading TeaPartyPatriots spreadsheet incorrectly – or….
I’ll keep it and make corrections as I gain more info…
In the Carter mid-term election, which was nowhere near the disaster Obama is (and keeps trending to) both the sitting Democrat senators got booted, replaced by Republicans. It’s still referred to hereabouts as “The Minnesota Massacre”.
I wouldn’t be overly surprised if history repeats itself.
Where is the demographic breakout and party affiliation breakout for respondents in that poll?
Nevermind. I found them.
Which one?
Research 2000 or Rasmussen?
You should be able to click on either poll to get to the source info.
Ahhh…this is getting silly. I have no problem believing that both Obama’s job approval and/or favorables are going down and that more people going right than left. I think that it is the natural order of things to always think the grass is greener on the other side. Ultimately, people are rarely happy with politics no matter which party is in power.
It’s more than the demographic polled, it’s the questions asked. I stopped taking them because none of the multiple choice responses accurately reflected my opinion, and there were usually no “none of the above” options.
Rate President Obama:
A) He is the Messiah
B) He is the AntiChrist
OK, a little embellished, but not much.
Anybody note the growing number of “flat-forehead” moments out there…
Buffet, the MicroSoft CEO…
Now Collin Powell.
Woooooops…
Swede, in the polling biz, there’s another factor. When a live person takes the poll, many respondents won’t answer honestly if they feel their answer will tag them as a racist. Whether that label is accurate or not. In the case of Obama, some people will say they like him to avoid saying “they don’t like the black guy”. There are a number of articles on this.
As for the grass being greener Chap, I can’t think of a time when to the followers of a candidate, the grass could have looked any greener. As reality sets in, the swing to rejection may be pretty severe. So far, his stimulus bill is a failure. It’s only effect has been to drive up our debt. That’s starting to become more evident.
And my point is that the super high he generated among his followers may just produce a catastrophic low in terms of his ratings. Much more so than the typical case in post Pres Election polls.
Sorry Rags… I don’t follow.
this?
May be, but you seem to have a difficult time accepting it, as evidenced by your attempt to “prove” otherwise in submitting a Soros-Kos paid poll. This even though you confessed it’s revealing odd “high sided” numbers.
As I sez, if you had tossed out an RNC paid-for poll “proving” that the majority of Americans want the constitution changed so GWBush can come back for a 3rd term, I’d call BS on that too.
Nope – as I said, it’s only human to look for any tiny ray of sunshine at midnight. That works if you’re close to the Artic Circle. And for the Democrats, the sun is just beginning to set. The numbers, for them, will get much worse, if you look at the trends.
Picture your reaction when you realize you did something really dumb.
Hand comes forcefully to forehead in a slapping motion. Sufferer exclaims, “How could I have been SO stupid?!?!?” (or words to that effect).
See? A “flat-forehead” moment.
Often a malady associated with severe buyer’s remorse…or being chumped.
Perhaps, but this has yet to be seen. As it stands, he is predictably off his highest high, but he still has very good support, even from Rasmussen.
There is a cultural element, too. A lot of people who live in Maine and Massachusetts are just plain nasty. Their political choices reflect that.
Very good point, NJ-A.
All true. Only time will tell.
The swing group, if there is one, are the independents. And they can be a fickle bunch.
That’s an optimistic “the water’s only 4 inches deep now” observation if I ever heard one, Chappy.
Got it.
LOL
No. I was merely defending one particular pollster, which has a very good track record and is on one side of the spectrum. Being on the high end in and of itself means nothing, and certainly doesn’t mean it is an outlier. Otherwise we should properly dismiss Rassmussen from the conversation as well for being on the extreme low end. But I don’t because I take their polls as a legitimate data point as well. The only poll I would truly dismiss out of hand is Zogby, because he is simply awful.
So did you out of hand dismiss every Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll or every Fox News/ Opinions Dynamic Poll taked during the election? The fact is that the vast majority of polls are paid for by someone else, otherwise pollsters wouldn’t make much money, would they? To dismiss a poll based purely on the fact that it wasn’t performed for free is absurd.
Well, if 53% is very good, OK. And don’t even evoke the W comparison. I would call 70% or I guess even 65% very good. He is now nearly in the netral zone.
Also interesting that when your position is becoming untenable, the discussion is getting “silly.” Kind of like Dear Leader’s “silly season” response to criticism.
I’m really enjoying skimming through these comments, especially in light of the fact that during the election, EVERY conservative couldn’t stop talking about how polls were meaningless, that Sarah and Joe The Plumber would carry the day no matter what Gallup said.
If you don’t like the results, the poll isn’t valid. That’s the coocoo bananas world of the right.
I guarantee that most presidents would be fine with a +9 approval in their worst poll. Your 65-70 standard is silly and untenable.
No. What was getting silly is I was going to spend time looking up detailed crosstabs. Better. Things. To. Do.
I don’t know about that, but I do recall RedPill claiming that the ONLY poll he would trust was an AOL (as in for AOL members only, so you can imagine how that demographic would shake out) online straw poll that showed Obama losing every state but one (including NY, CA and Illinois for petes sake).
As it has lamented here many times before in this space by many people conservatism has no voice. No one dare speak against the one! However watch our girl Sarah. Is she a voice from the wilderness that will lead us? We have no voice and she drove all the libs nuts last fall when she went after Obama. She can become the voice we need.
Actually, yes I did, as I still do, I didn’t then put much stock in any bought&paid-for polls. Especially in cases where the buyer is a PAC, ala Kos (or as I said any GOP PAC poll). It’s just common sense, Chap. You don’t really believe Kos or any other PAC is going to offer up polls saying “our side sucks”, do you?
Mebbe I’ve just been around the political block a few more times than you. Not a chronological put-down of you just fessin’ up that I’m one skeptic curmudgeon, having seen more than my share of BS tossd out by political interests.
That’s not what I said, Chappy. “For free”? – hopefully that’s gotta be your liberal (“free lunch”) mind speaking, not your legal mind.
But if you are really sure you want to stick by the your assertion that “follow the money” variety criticism of polling is “absurd”, I can run polls paid for by tabacco companies up the flagpole and watch you salute ‘em.
In fact, I could toss out a whole variety of all sortsa bought&paid for polling data for you to praise.
Now, are you truly sure considering “who funded what” is irrelevant (if not “absurd”)?
So, young man, is the Gallup poll that’s the topic of this post valid? – in your special “world”, I mean.
EVERY conservative? Hmmm. Don’t recall that. Most conservatives I discussed with or read were expecting a loss. Only question was by how much, and again Rasmussen hit it almost dead on.
Polls are useful in giving some people jobs, and others something to talk about, I guess. Predicting human behavior has obvious limits.
So not free, but not paid for by any entity that would have an interest in actually paying for one. Gotcha. If you want to make this into a Kos v. Fox News thing, then lets just drop it. I am not going to change your mind about how super evil Kos is nor you me about how super fair and balanced Fox is.
Nope. I am saying it is wrong to dismiss a poll out of hand because someone actually paid to have it taken. You can and should factor possible bias into your analysis, sure, but you have shown zero interest in actually looking at the pollster and the poll and making any sort of objective analysis.
Guys, guys….
There are PLENTY of metrics out there the point in the same trending direction.
Anybody here doubt that things are starting to favor OPERATION OVER-REACH?
Really. ANYBODY?
rags, repeat after me. Dear Leader is all wise, all knowing and omnipotent. We are the collective. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
We are the world. Or something.
Now, THAT has been true of me for decades….
Looking at the demographic breakdown of the R2000 poll, I didn’t see anything that would invalidate the results. It appeared to be a representative sample. I’m not 100% certain about the state to state composition, but they indicated that they conducted the poll state to state and 2400 respondents is a sufficient number for that type of poll. And I didn’t see anything odd in the text of the questions.
I would add what you can’t see is the quality of the phone number samples and the specific time period of the poll. Meaning time of day the call s were made. But they do state the dates, which were Monday through Thursday. Typically the best evenings to poll and get representative raw samples.
But in comparing to other polls, or some hypothetical golden standard, it seemed fine to me. Yeah, I’m suspect of the Kos/Soros influence. But I honestly can’t see how they could have influenced the research.
Thank you, NJ.
Chappy, like “For free”, I didn’t mention “Fox”. You did – scroll up and check. Even then I replied I’m not impressed by polls by anybody with an axe to grind. Think I pointed that out twice, at least. (Feel free to debate yourself on it, though, Chap.)
That’s all well and good as smokeblowing goes, but you missed two things. 1) I’m pointing out it’s important who is picking up the tab, not that it costs money to do polling and 2) to you didn’t address the specific question I posed, querying about your yay or nay on polling data paid for by “Big Tabacco”.
I’m assuming you don’t do actual litigation, but are more “desk-oriented” in the legal profession. I’m assuming that partly because most attorneys I know have dealt with hostile expert witnesses. The attorneys very obviously realize the witness is (just as obviously) paid to give expert testimony designed to undermine their case. I’ve never known a lawyer to be overwhelmed by the hostile expert witnesses creds. If the attys were very terribly inexperienced and didn’t know about the expert witnesses-”follow the money” rule, they would quite easily be chewed up and spit out in record time by their adversary.
You do know the difference between a legitimate poll paid for by an interested entity and a so called “push poll”, right? Believe me, for every poll big tobacco puts out there with the question “Do you believe people should have the right to smoke or do you favor government regulation of your activities” they also commission legitimate ones because they need more than propaganda to run their business; they need actual data too.
With that in mind, why don’t you ACTUALLY LOOK AT THE POLL IN QUESTION rather than hemming and hawing and beating around the bush about the source of its funding and tell me if you have any specific issues with it. Or better yet, just read post 95, from someone that clearly knows more than either of us.
And the problem with your expert witness analogy is that the other side actually has to show some evidence that the expert witness’s conclusions are wrong. They can’t just rely on the whole “They are biased! They have been paid!” canard that you are using to dismiss commissioned polls.
No, you didn’t say “for free.” You just dismissed every entity that would actually pay. What does that leave? But you are right about Fox news, it was a misreading of your post. I apologize.
Don’t blame Minnesota for Frankenfraud.
Coleman almost certainly beat him among legal, registered voters, and almost all the 3rd party people were casting protest votes against Coleman, but would never have voted for Franken.
They did, however, make Coleman’s victory close enough that mysteriously discovered ballots and other Demonratic Party shenanigans allowed Franken to steal it.