Don’t let Operation Demoralize get you down.
It’s still two months until the election, folks, and polls can change dramatically, particularly toward the end, when they know they have to get it right, and stop oversampling Democrats.
[Update a while later]
Spreading fear and despondency. Don’t fall for it.
Talking about Romney already having lost – what, a week after the nomination? Really? – only makes the libertarians say, “Oh, I won’t soil myself with voting for him, then. I’ll vote for Gary Johnson.” It makes the social conservatives say, “I’ll stay home and pray for the country.” It makes the doom and gloom crowd say, “I won’t vote. I’ll buy ammo and be ready to fight the civil war.”
Yeah, praying and arming yourselves won’t ever hurt (talk of civil war might), but deciding not to vote on the basis of skewed polls and smarmy Journolist spin is just stupid. And amplifying and giving credence to the MSM spin when you KNOW the polls are beyond flawed and that the Justice Department has its jackboots into the pollsters is criminal. Yes, criminal. It’s spreading fear and despondency.
Do you feel scared at times? Do you wonder if we’ve gone too far? Do you wonder if we can’t win? Everyone does. Do you not want to delude yourselves? No one does.
But we already have a disadvantage in not having a dedicated media. MUST you amplify the media? What is the point of fear and despondency but to make our side give up?
The signs are against the polls. The very success of the 2016 documentary is against the polls. The registration momentum is against the polls.
Is America going to go back after Obama because he gave a speech? Oh, for heaven’s sake, even the MSM admitted it wasn’t a good speech. That’s why they played on Clinton extensively.
I live in a red area in the middle of a blue area. Four years ago you couldn’t walk down the street without seeing Obama’s signs everywhere. Now there are two in the entire neighborhood. Are there Romney signs? Well, no. But there aren’t Romney signs at my house either. I have cars and outdoor cats. Vandals always strike Republican signs. It’s who they are. However there are a lot of signs for the local republican candidate to city council. Perhaps I’m stupid in reading these as proxies, but I don’t think so.
They’re not enthusiastic. They’ve got nothing. Nothing except propaganda. Amplifying the propaganda will make them enthusiastic again. It will destroy turnout and interest on our side, too. Is that what you want?
It’s pointless to pay any attention to polls right now. They won’t start to come into line with reality until the last few days before the election.
It is rather disconcerting that Romney is down by that amount, given the fact that for the past two years the BHo has lost in polls against “generic Republican.” People just don’t know what’s at stake….which is hardly surprising given the state of modern “education.”
Polls are garbage. They’re canted to get the result the reporters — inevitably leftists — want, then reported in such a way as to be as favorable to the Democrats as possible.
Talk to James Lileks about the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s polls. Every election they show the Democrats with a massive lead — until the last few weeks before the election. Then they show a sudden rush for the Republican, and end up just a few points away from the voting results. It’s intentional, and while the Strib is clumsy, the rest of the press does it, too.
What do you think people did before polling? They supported their candidates, made their arguments, and had only the vaguest idea of how things would turn out.
Ignore the press polls. I think we’d all be better off that way.
(Of course, the campaigns themselves pay for accurate polls, unfiltered by the press. You’ll notice that the Democrats have been running a get-out-the-base campaign.)
And you can hardly get more “generic Republican” than Romney.
True, but a “generic Republican” (or “generic Democrat”) isn’t going to have the particular flaws and baggage of a real one. Voters know what they don’t like about Obama. They’ve been learning what they don’t like about Romney.
Ya, Obama’s attacks based on race, gender, religion, and class have had an impact.
Romney really needs to respond to the Obama campaigns attacks that Romney wants to enslave black people and ban birth control.
MfK – did you not understand the post? The polls are propaganda tools and not even close to reality. Disconcerting? Try ridiculous!
Chin up there, Buckaroo. As noted on Drudge today:
POLL: O 49% R 45%…
FLASHBACK: CARTER +4 OVER REAGAN IN SEPT 1980 [+8 IN OCT]…
FLASHBACK: DUKAKIS +17 OVER BUSH AFTER DNC 1988…
Drudge is cherry picking. There was exactly one poll that showed Carter up 8 in October, 1980; at the same time, other polls showed Reagan leading.
Poll averages are better predictors than single polls. Trends are better predictors than snapshots. The polls say:
• The race has been very stable since Romney won the nomination
• The race has been close, with a slight Obama lead
• The RNC helped pull Romney into a tie
• The DNC pushed Obama into a bigger-than-usual (for this race) lead
History says that convention bounces are usually short-lived.
No modern candidate has won without taking the lead at some point before September. That doesn’t mean that Romney can’t possibly do it, just that he’d be the first.
That said, the “polls are propaganda tools” line is something we wouldn’t be hearing here if the polls were showing the candidates’ position reversed. Shooting the messenger doesn’t change the message.
I really hate it when people try to tell me how things really were when I lived through the times and they did not. Sort of like when youngsters inform me Global Cooling wasn’t really a big deal in the 70’s.
But, in any case, fine. Enjoy yourself while you can.
Yeah, who you going to believe? Your memories, or actual documentation?
My memories. They are less corruptible.
Bullshit. As usual from you.
I don’t obsess over polls. I’ve long believed that they have more to do with molding public opinion than reflecting it.
On the other hand, I remember some websites in 2008 insisting that the polls were wrong and that McCain/Palin would pull off an upset. Turned out the polls were right after all.
In a binary sense. But, IIRC, they were predicting a much larger margin than actually materialized.
*yawn*
A poll will do far less to demoralize than the actual unemployment rate and the economic destruction.
I expect the media to report exit polls showing Obama in the lead and telling people west of the east coast that it is all over with and their votes don’t matter, disenfranchising people who haven’t voted yet.
Such misleading polls also play into one nightmare scenario for this November: Romney wins, but convince enough unstable lefties that he stole the election and you can get riots.
I wouldn’t worry about that — recent riot theaters orchestrated by the Left demonstrate a lack of conviction for genuine violence.
I recently moved from Colorado to Alabama to take a new job. In the meantime, I’ve applied for absentee ballots from Colorado. There’s no doubt about Romney carrying Alabama but Colorado is still a swing state and we believe our votes will count more there than here. I’ll crawl on my hands and knees over broken glass if necessary to mail those ballots.
The next time you hear statistics about rampant voter fraud remember that your vote is the sort being included in those numbers. Your vote may be technically invalid, since you are no longer a Colorado resident, but it is not part of a conspiracy, does not affect the national popular vote, and has virtually no chance of changing the election outcome.
I’m still legally a Colorado resident until I change it officially. I still have my Colorado tags and driver’s license, I still own property in Colorado and will have to pay taxes there (in addition to the taxes I’ve already paid).
What would be illegal is if I tried to register to vote here at the same time.
Colorado does not require that you actually live there to maintain residency for voting purposes?
No, states allow people to move and change their registration later. Unfortunately, some people don’t play by the rules.
Jim, you ignorant slut, you’re commenting on a blog owned by a Wyoming voter who lives in California.
It’s not vote fraud because he doesn’t vote in California.
The next time you hear statistics about rampant voter fraud remember that your vote is the sort being included in those numbers.
Really? Larry, has anyone offered you a cigarette for your vote?
I’m confused by polls that put them even as close as that stuff on the Drudge page. I don’t know anyone, black, white or polka dotted, (D) voter or (R) voter who is voting for him again. Two of my friends who were head over heels in LOVE with Obumble 5 years ago and voted for him, are openly voting for their own best interests this time and crossing the line to Romney.
I’m not sure this will be a Reagan style landslide, but It’ll be by a bigger margin than what put these socialists boobs in office.
The New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael was famously quoted as saying, after Nixon won 49 states: “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
The bubble you live in seems to be as airtight as Ms. Kael’s.
“I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
And how many of those people were raving Nixon fans in the previous election who decided to vote against him in 1972?
My guess: 0.
I’ve no idea who’ll win, but that’s hardly a valid comparison.
It’s pointless to pay any attention to polls right now.
Prediction: if tomorrow’s polls showed a 10 point swing towards Romney, Rand would pay attention.
Anybody running or commenting on a political blog cares about the outcome in November. Polling is the best predictor we have of what will happen, and our best tool for understanding why it will happen. Those things are true when you like the poll numbers, and they’re true when you don’t.
Mass media polls in most countries are notoriously left-biased, so any poll which claimed Romney was way ahead would be far more likely to be valid than a poll claiming Obama is slightly ahead.
Ultimately, the only poll that matters is the one on election day.
Mass media polls in most countries are notoriously left-biased
Where’s the evidence? In 2010 most major polls were pretty balanced. Rasmussen stood out for its 4% lean towards the GOP.
For that matter, the polls in 2008 were actually pretty accurate at the end of the day, despite Rand protesting at the time that they weren’t…
Enjoy!
when you KNOW the polls are beyond flawed and that the Justice Department has its jackboots into the pollsters
Headed into tinfoil hat territory!
If we can’t defeat Obama, we might as well pack up Western civilization. It is done.
Exaggerate much? I remember hearing liberals saying things like this in 2004. Elections matter, but as long as we don’t go off the deep end there’s always another election.
But we already have a disadvantage in not having a dedicated media
And yet this is posted on PJ Media, and begins “Recently I’ve been reading the anti-Obama blogsphere….” What happened to all the right-wing blog triumphalism? Breitbart.com? The Army of Davids?
The signs are against the polls.
What signs? Chicken entrails?
The very success of the 2016 documentary is against the polls.
It’s made $26 million. At $10/seat, that’s less than 3 million viewers, in a country with over 100 million registered voters.
For comparison, Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 made nearly $120 million in 2004, when movie tickets were a bit cheaper. If box office was a better predictor than polls, we’d have had President John Kerry.
The author is succumbing to motivated reasoning. As Richard Feynman put it: “You must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
“…Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 made nearly $120 million in 2004…”
Apples to tennis balls. On its opening weekend of June 25 – June 27, 2004, the film generated box-office revenues of $23.9 million in the U.S. and Canada…
So you think 2016 will catch up? That seems very unlikely. Farenheit 9/11 made about as much money in its opening weekend as 2016 has made in a couple months, and 2016‘s take is falling week over week.
The 2016 box office does not tell us anything about who will win in November.
“So you think 2016 will catch up?”
Looks like it already did. The question you didn’t ask is, will it keep pace?
2016 hasn’t been out for a couple of months yet. I doubt it will gross as much as F-9/11 especially worldwide.
Culturally, conservatives are not drawn to these types of movies but the opposite is true for liberals. Maybe when it comes out on DVD, it will get more attention.
A large part of the success of F-9/11 was the international campaign of character assassination waged by the Democrats against Bush and our country. It is apparent now, that this was purely partisan and not based on any actual ideological opposition to war.
The Chicago teachers strike is not something that will play out well for Obama. If Mitt were smart he would start hammering Obama on public employee unions, unfunded pensions and school choice.
I’m not so sure about that. Rush Limbaugh speculated today that perhaps the strike is a setup to allow Obama to wade in and settle the whole thing, thus making him look good. I don’t think this is tinfoil hat territory. We’re talking about Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, and Barack Obama, after all. Does anybody put it past them to gin up a “crisis” to solve?
And Rush also made the entirely sensible observation that there is no way any union will do anything to embarrass Obama right now.