Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Polling and what it means


What’s New Today

Story #1 looks to see if Obama’s strategy is working.  #2 has a video of John Sununu handling Andrea Mitchell as she seems to be speaking for the Democratic Party.  #3 Obama’s top fundraiser admits that Obama is engaged in class warfare.  #4 show the hypocrisy of the Democrats attacks on Romney.  #5 tells of 5 broken promises by Obama that you will probably never read about.  #6 tells how more and more Americans are tuning out the MSM news.  And #7 shows why you always need to check the demographics of any poll. 


Today’s Thoughts

There are reports that prominent Islamists in Egypt have begun to call for the destruction of the "pagan" pyramids.  It appears they are looking to fundamentally change their country.

Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.  I guess doubling it to him is the same as cutting it in half.

"Mr. President, where are the jobs?" Rep. Nancy Pelosi asked on CNN in October 2003. "The American people will not settle for—nor should the Republicans celebrate—a jobless recovery."  October 2003 after it was reported 203,000 jobs were created.  I wonder how she likes May and June 2012?
Five Democrats joined the Republicans in the House voting to repeal Obamacare.    


1.  Obama struggles

Two things have become clear in the presidential race over the past month. One, it's evident that President Obama's campaign team believes, with good justification, that attacking Romney's record at Bain Capital to portray him as a wealthy, out-of-touch millionaire is their most effective line of attack. Second, it's becoming clear that the attacks are doing more to buy the Obama campaign time than seriously change the trajectory of the race.

For all the attention paid to the effectiveness of President Obama's Bain-themed attacks, it's remarkable how Obama has been stuck right around 47 percent for a very long time.  As the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza documented, the president's team has handily outspent Romney and his allied super PACs, pouring in $91 million into eight swing states in an early spending barrage intended to make Romney seem an unacceptable challenger.  But for all that effort, the numbers haven't moved much at all: The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll out today shows the race deadlocked at 47 percent. Yesterday's USA Today/Gallup swing state poll showed Obama statistically tied with Romney, the exact same result the survey showed one month ago. 

Meanwhile, in the coming months, Romney should have a spending advantage, having significantly outraised Obama over the last two months.  Along with the RNC, the campaign has $160 million cash-on-hand, a total that will likely be greater than the Obama team's money. (The Obama campaign tellingly didn't release their cash-on-hand figures.)  That will allow Romney to match or surpass Obama on the airwaves, having survived a period when he was outgunned. The Romney campaign has already hinted it plans to counterattack by raising questions about Obama's credibility. And American Crossroads announced it has reserved $40 million of television ad time in the final two months - when more voters are paying close attention….


I expect to see a bounce for Romney after the nominating convention, but I doubt Obama will see one after the Democratic convention. People have already made up their mind on Obama.  47 percent is his high water line.   I’m looking for a 55-44 election for Romney with the Republicans taking the Senate and holding the House.  And the meme about his attacks on Romney in the swing states working aren’t borne out by the facts.  He won these states by an average of 8 percent and the polls show him leading among registered voters (not likely voters) by 2%.  The same poll shows him leading by 3% in states not getting the ads. 

2.  Andrea Mitchell gets taken to school

…Sununu: No. When you've sent $500 million to Fisker and it goes to Finland immediately. When you send the solar money and it goes to Mexico. When you send the turbine money and it goes to Denmark. And we can go on all day. There is $29 billion worth of purchases that came out of this administration, outsourced jobs to foreign countries.

Mitt Romney outsourced zero --

Mitchell: Zero?

Sununu: Zero. He wasn't there when those issues came up….


Is offshoring a winning issue for Obama?  Watch the video and see Andrea Mitchell try to make the case while John Sununu takes her apart.


3.  Top Obama Fundraiser blasts class warfare

Millionaire developer R. Donahue Peebles  -– a 52-year-old D.C. native  whose company website touts The Peebles Corp. as "the country's largest African American real estate development company," is a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama...raising between $100K and $200K for this reelection.
But in a 20-minute conversation with HuffPost Monday, Peebles blasted Obama's campaign messaging. He said, as he told other press outlets, that his frustration was sparked by receiving an email from the DNC that mocked Romney as" out of touch" for having a boat that fit 12 people, accompanied by a picture of the Republican presumptive nominee on vacation.

"That offended me. Now if I were on the fence, he'd have lost me," said Peebles, who described himself as nonetheless a "big supporter of the president's."

"What I get concerned about is the message from the Obama campaign that we only want someone who has not been successful to run for president. What do we want here? You can't be successful and run the country? We don't want somebody who has been successful to run it?  That doesn't make sense," Peebles said.

"So I look at that and I see that those things are becoming offensive to some of his strongest supporters, financially."  It would be unrealistic to think that that kind of thing would not impact the enthusiasm for those who are supportive of the president, financially, and certainly would turn off others who were on the fence to say, 'You know, what the heck with it. I'm done,'" Peebles continued. "And they go on to Romney."…

This simply is common sense, but the reason I posted it is because many on the left do not see that Obama is engaged in class warfare.  He is.

4.  Investments made overseas:  What sauce for the goose

Disclosure forms reveal that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, previously held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India…

It’s been a consistent theme of Obama’s reelection strategy: Attack Romney for foreign investments he held, especially in Swiss bank accounts, “to try to promote his wealthy, out-of-touch businessman persona.”
But disclosure forms reveal that in 2010, Wasserman Schultz invested between $1,001-$15,000 in a 401k retirement fund run by Davis Financial Fund. As the fund discloses, it is invested in the Julius Baer Group Ltd. and the State Bank of India GDR Ltd., as well as other financial, insurance, bank institutions…
Similarly, according to disclosure forms from 2004, Wasserman Schultz had holdings in the Fidelity Advisor Overseas Fund. That fund is invested in HSBC bank (a British financial institution), Hengdeli Holdings (a Hong Kong watch company), Novo Nordisk (a Danish drug company), Volkswagen (a German auto company), Rakuten (a Japanese shipping business), Richemont Cie Financiere (a Swiss luxury goods company), and many others.

To be clear, there is nothing in Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s disclosure forms to suggest that the DNC chair invested in anything illegal. But it is clear that some of her holdings had investments overseas, in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, the state bank of India, and many other overseas holdings….

Debbie shows how she is either stupid or hypocritical.  I don’t think she is a hypocrite.



5.  The Five Obama Promises the MSM will never Mention

..BERNARD GOLDBERG: But they [liberal media] do it. They do it.

Look, can I give you another -- you like facts. Let me give you another example. There's a piece in the current edition of The Weekly Standard by a very smart fellow named Pete Wehner, who's on FOX from time to time. I'm going to just give you five facts. Just five.

Fact No. 1, as a candidate, Barack Obama promised to create five million new energy jobs alone. Just 5 million energy jobs.
Fact No. 2, he claimed that, by the end of the first term, his healthcare plan, would quote, "bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family."
Fact No. 3, he guaranteed that his financial rescue plan would help stop foreclosures.
Fact No. 4, in the first year of his presidency, he pledged, quote, "to cut the deficit we inherited in the half by the end of my first term in office."
Fact No. 5, he said he would, quote, "lift two million Americans from poverty" and, quote, "jolt our economy back to life."

Have you seen that any place in the mainstream media? That Barack Obama has failed to deliver on his promises?

BILL O'REILLY: No. Nobody has put that in. Except for The Weekly Standard, nobody has brought that up. But all politicians make promises, and few deliver, to be fair.

GOLDBERG: Yes. But it's one thing to promise vaguely, "I promise you hope and change." These are very specific promises.

Listen, the same mainstream media that put Mitt Romney's stupid stunt while he was teenager in high school all over page one and on several jump pages, and the same mainstream media that put on page one Ann Romney's horse thing, you know, where she rides horses, which is a very expensive hobby, they found enough time and space to devote to that. Why can't they find time to devote to this?...

The MSM won’t mention it but count on seeing it in political ads this fall

6.  Gallup:  More and more Americans tune out the News

According to a new Gallup poll measuring Americans' confidence in television news, the level is the lowest since the poll was begun in 1993. 21% of adults expressed a great deal of confidence in television news reporting. No wonder CNN’s ratings are in the toilet.

Gallup tested 16 institutions, including newspapers, and TV news ranked 11th. Newspapers were ranked 10th. There was an interesting divide among those on the left; Democrats were the most confident in television news of all the groups surveyed (now there’s a shock) but postgraduates, who are more generally Democrats, had the least confidence in the TV news industry. This would tend to imply that well-educated people were more distrustful of what was spoon-fed them by the TV media, while those who were lower-income Democrats didn’t question the TV media’s bias toward the left. 
A very important statistic showed that moderates were much less confident than they were in 2008, which could mean a great deal in the November election because if the moderates view the TV news with suspicion, they will be less likely to vote for Barack Obama.

As the reality of Barack Obama’s failed economy sinks in, more and more Americans are skeptical of the TV news departments that insist on painting a rosy picture that doesn’t match the bleak world of foreclosures, closed businesses, and radically high unemployment that’s out there….

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/07/11/new-gallup-poll-Americans-TV-news

People don’t trust the media.  If you are a conservative that isn’t a surprise.  If you are a Democrat you probably feel that the media is slightly biased to the right, but generally get it correct (which if you think about it means they are leftist, just not as leftist as you are). 

7.  Always Check a Poll’s Demographics

Public polling is supposed to predict and reflect public opinion, not drive it.  But by the looks of two consecutive national surveys, it seems as though certain media organizations are far more interested in achieving the latter end than the former.  Yesterday, the Washington Post and ABC News published a poll purporting to show the presidential race tied at 47 percent.  As Dan mentioned, the poll 's partisan sample was a D+9, with a D/R/I of 33/24/36.  This is preposterous.  That would mean that this fall's electorate will be two points more Democratic than the Democrat wave year of 2008.  As a point of reference, the 2010 midterms showed Democrats and Republicans represented exactly evenly.  In spite of this terrible sample (for which WaPo polls are becoming infamous) the race is all knotted up.  One crucial note from the internals: Romney is beating Obama among independents by 14 points.  Let's be frank -- if Mitt Romney wins indies by anything close to 14 points in November, Barack Obama will be a one term president.  It's that simple.  But one risible poll wasn't quite enough for this week apparently; Reuters has gotten in on the action as well.  Their samples have been notoriously bad all cycle, too, and this latest survey is no exception.  Like its WaPo counterpart, Reuters' polling outfit concocted am identical, ludicrous partisan sample of D+9 (among adults, D+5 among registered voters).  The new poll's findings?

(1) Barack Obama "leads" Mitt Romney by 6 points overall, with independents woefully under-represented.
(2) Obama's job approval rating is 48/47, a +1 result in a D+9 sample.  That's bad news for the president.
(3) Worse news for The One: Of the few independents sampled, only 41 percent approve of his job performance.  As Jay Cost notes, that's worse than Dukakis territory.
(4) The president is 10 points underwater on the economy -- again, with a sample skew that should really goose his numbers on every question.
(5) Almost inexplicably, Republicans hold a four-point advantage on the survey's generic Congressional ballot.  I repeat, D+9 sample….

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/07/11/another_hopelessly_slanted_poll_spells_danger_for_obama

Something to keep in mind when the polls don’t make a lot of sense.  I’ve seen two now that say Romney has a big lead with independents but Obama is tied or ahead of him.  That doesn’t make any sense.  But the polls keep over polling Democrats. 

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