Month: August 2012

Two GOP delegates threw nuts at a black CNN camera woman and taunted her saying, "This is how we feed animals." They were ejected, but shortly thereafter the Romney campaign, the GOP and CNN threw a blanket of secrecy over the incident and more than 24 hours later, the secrecy is holding. ...

A small little polling report for you today, after the motherload of polls released yesterday. There is only one state level poll, and that is of Iowa by PPP, which changes Iowa to Lean Obama to Slim Obama. Meanwhile, some national polls are detecting a bounce from the GOP convention .... for President Obama.

Yes. It is that simple. In her speech to the Wingnut National Convention, she had the opportunity to tell the truth about how she leveraged government programs including recent stimulus funding to build her business, but instead she decided to lie. She blamed the President for keeping her business down by imposing "new regulations" while never acknowledged the government's role in getting her business off the ground. ...

The Economist, a bastion of liberal thought (/sarcasm), doesn't seem to like Mittens:

Mr Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: the faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?

We are now seeing some polls switch over to their "Likely voter" screens. I hate "Likely Voter" screens because it allows whatever organization to play with the numbers even more than when they play with the demographics. Further, "Likely Voter" screens are biased towards Republicans. Since who turns out from election to election varies wildly, I think Likely Voter Screens based on prior elections are almost always inaccurate. Thus, I prefer, when given a choice between Registered Voters and Likely Voters, to go with Registered Voters. Unfortunately, as the election draws near, all polling outfits and media organizations switch over to their own Likely Voter screen. C'est la vie. The changes in our map this time are from new polls in Ohio and Michigan which show each state a tie, while we have Florida getting bluer.