Politirazzi

By Jeff

As a follow-up to Meg’s post regarding just how ignorant many people are regarding this election and what are their (foolish) motives for choosing their candidate, it got me thinking about a recent blog post from Ben Smith, who makes the point that it’s actually surprising that "only" 10 percent of Americans think Barack Obama is a Muslim, given the striking ignorance Americans show in many other areas.

So, building off his base, here are a few more statistics about Americans that is really actually pretty depressing.

10 percent think Barrack Obama is Muslim.

18 percent think the sun revolves around the Earth.

19 percent accept the presence of spells and witchcraft.

22 percent think George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened.

By Jeff

The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and V.P. Hillary Clinton will win the presidential nomination by defeating Republican challengers John McCain and V.P. Tim Pawlenty by capturing 293 electoral votes to 245. Specific enough for you?

Every pundit and polling company is predicting the coming election, but would they really bet on it? Would Rasmussen and Zogby et al care to make a wager that their polls paint an accurate picture of the current electorate? Probably not.

Enter: Intrade. Intrade (based in Ireland) is a predictive market that lets users tap into the “Wisdom of Crowds," which essentially says that while individual perceptions and opinions of the future diverge, if you average those projections, the prediction is typically very accurate. This is one of the main premises behind the efficient market hypothesis. Intrade lets users trade on the outcome of a litany of events like levels of CO2, gas prices, if Eliot Spitzer will be indicted, tax rates in 2011 and the number of Google searches in 2008. However, they are most noted for markets involving political events.

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By Kimberly

The writing is on the wall for Hillary, which I find a shame because, though I’ve been judgmental of her, I was actually leaning towards her proposed solutions. It’s not her major loss in North Carolina that sealed the deal, but the last nail in the coffin is the story that broke on Friday that Rasmussen Reports will stop polling people regarding Hillary’s campaign.

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(AP)

By Dontre

Given their strikingly similar, almost indistinguishable platforms, it would make sense that any Democrat would vote for the party’s nominee, regardless of which senator took the honor. However, as the battle wages on for the nomination, supporters of each of the respective candidates are increasingly becoming disenchanted with the opposing senator; some are even vowing to vote against the party’s nominee in a move that, as the saying goes, cuts off the nose to spite the face.

A sharp contrast from a time when Democrats said they would vote for either of the candidates, a recent Washington Post poll finds that one-third of Democrats say they may not even support the party’s nominee in the fall, if it is not their candidate. In fact, a similar poll by Time magazine shows that while 68 percent of Obama’s supporters say they would support Hillary Clinton if she won the nomination and faced Senator McCain, only 56 percent of her supporters say they would support Obama if he is chosen; one in four would vote Republican.

While the Republicans are steadily mobilizing their base behind Sen. John McCain, the Democrats are suffering an internal struggle with each passing day that their two candidate spar over the nomination. Their continued fights pulls their party base into competing directions, which party officials worry will hurt the eventual nominee that faces Sen. McCain, who will have had months of unfettered campaigning and fundraising, strengthening his support.

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I apologize for the lame pun, but Vermont Teddy Bears were my passion as a child. Well, they've created one for each of the leading presidential candidates to go along with the poll on their Web site.

Vermont Teddy Bear Company

It's amusing that the McCain bear is snow white and the Obama bear has brown fur.
— Emily

By Lynne

McCain is raising a fraction of the money that the Democratic Duo is pulling – maybe because his opponents are doing his job for him.

According to a recent Gallup Poll, 28% percent of Clinton supporters say they will vote for McCain if Obama wins the nomination, and 19% of Obama supporters will vote for McCain if Clinton gets the nod. And a whopping 16% will stay home and sulk if their preferred candidate isn’t on the general ballot.

But nothing in politics operates in a vacuum. If Al Gore is tapped as VP, maybe a chunk of those Democratic Deserters will return to the fold. If McCain chooses Mitt Romney as his VP, that might give pause to some party disloyalists. Or as much as they say it’s off the table, both Obama and Clinton are consummate politicians – if a joint ticket is needed to keep party members in the fold, then that’s what will happen.

Of course, crossover voting by Democrats is nothing new.

The reality is that the entire flap about the long primary season is nothing more than a ready-made excuse if the Democrats lose the White House for the third time in a row. Political infighting is already being floated as a scapegoat if McCain wins. Democratic Party spin-masters need to earn their big fat salaries, after all.

Remember 2000? They did an amazing job convincing their membership that Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy was to blame rather than the 12% of Florida Democrats who crossover voted for Republican George W. Bush. Hundreds of thousands in crossover votes - you do the math.

If Nader was truly the problem, the Democratic Party has been long aware of the solution: instant runoff voting (IRV). IRV allows voters to rank the candidates in order of preference: 1-2-3. If your first choice doesn’t have enough support to win, your vote is transferred to your second choice, and so on. No more “spoilers” or vote splitting. DNC chair Howard Dean is a supporter (as is McCain) and Obama introduced IRV legislation when he was in the Illinois Senate.

But the Democrats haven’t done anything in the last eight years to put IRV in place. They’ve been too busy rolling over for the Bush-Cheny administration, voting for a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, accepting donations from the very same corporations that are polluting our environment, and doing absolutely nothing to protect the 47 million Americans without health care.

Do I think the extended primary season will hurt the eventual Democratic nominee? Sure, but no more than the Democratic Party’s own record and lack of real leadership.

By Adrian

Americans are schizophrenic! I was sitting on the subway thumbing through the paper when I saw the headline “McCain erases Obama lead.” If there is one thing that people can say about this campaign it’s that the prognosticators and pundits have been proven wrong over and over again. McCain’s campaign, according to “all the experts,” was dead last August – bankrupt and written off. Yet, he is the Republican nominee, and as of today’s poll results, the presumptive president. And, I guarantee, like Joe Namath in Super Bowl III, that this poll is wrong. I’m sure that a new poll will come out in the not to distant future reversing this latest poll’s findings.

Throughout this whole election the American people have been polled, and polled, and polled, and yet they consistently find ways of fooling all the news gurus and polling companies. Each reactionary headline wants to proclaim a winner and a reason for the results. The news article sighted above claimed “The survey showed the extended Democratic primary campaign creating divisions among supporters of Obama and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and suggests a tight race for the presidency in November no matter which Democrat becomes the nominee.” Really? Two months ago, polls showed Obama with a 10 point lead over McCain in a head-to-head match up. How about this for an article: “The American people still seem unsure as to who they would like to see as President. Much is dependent on how the campaigns actually conclude. This may be a close race, or a landslide. Honestly, this reporter does not know.” Don’t worry, you will never see that.

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