Gallup whispers DOOM in 2010.

With less than four months to go before the fall elections, the greatest growth industry in the country right now is the tea importation business: everybody who has any interest in the November results is trying his or her hand at precognition.  Gallup is no exception:

This year’s low approval ratings for Congress are a potentially ominous sign for President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress. Gallup has found greater party seat change in Congress in midterm elections when Congress has had low approval ratings.

Specifically, in the five midterm elections in which Congress’ approval ratings at the time of the election were below 40%, there was an average net change in seats of 29 from the president’s party to the opposition. That includes the 1994 and 2006 elections, when the net change in seats was large enough to pass control of the U.S. House from one party to the other.

They currently track Congress’s approval rating at 20%. Continue reading Gallup whispers DOOM in 2010.

#RSRH Right, that Lockerbie [redacted] isn’t dying.

Yeah, so I saw this – on CNN, actually (it was what was playing at the Mickey Dee’s where we stopped for emergency fries-and-diaper change):

A cancer expert whose medical assessment of the Lockerbie bomber helped lead to his early release has been quoted as saying the Libyan could live for another 10 years.

[snip]

[Karol] Sikora is cited as saying: “It is embarrassing that he’s gone on for so long.”

No, it’s embarrassing that we and the Brits let this terrorist go free.  The term that Dr. Sikora needs to be using is ‘damning.’

Which I use in its theological sense.

#rsrh WaPo attacks… Norman Rockwell.

Blake Gopnik*(Via Hot Air Headlines):

Norman Rockwell is often championed as the great painter of American virtues. Yet the one virtue most nearly absent from his work is courage. He doesn’t challenge any of us, or himself, to think new thoughts or try new acts or look with fresh eyes. From the docile realism of his style to the received ideas of his subjects, Rockwell reliably keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone.

Norman Rockwell, Southern Justice (1963):

Moe Lane:

Blake Gopnik?  Geh kak afen yam.

Continue reading #rsrh WaPo attacks… Norman Rockwell.

NY Dem Donors Discover Elementary Self-Respect.

(H/T: Instapundit) A fascinating bit of trivia for people out there: if you’re a Democrat, and you go  keep telling a group of folks- in this case, Wall Street and other wealthy New York Democratic donors – that they’re unmitigated scum who need to be drained of every drop of their dirty money if they want to avoid being lynched by an angry Mob led by the White House and Congressional Democrats – hey, guess what happens!  They stop giving Democrats money!

No!  Really!  They do!

A perfect storm of events — the recession, Wall Street anger at Washington, donors who feel ignored by the White House and interest group dissatisfaction — has Democrats bracing for a brutal fundraising period and fearful of losing dominance in longtime donor stronghold and megarich New York.

While the exact quarterly figures won’t be known until after the July 15 filing deadline, a number of Democratic campaign insiders said the past few months were a mighty struggle to raise cash for candidates.

Continue reading NY Dem Donors Discover Elementary Self-Respect.

Pollster hammers in some nails to the R2000 coffin.

Much as I’d like the dKos/R2000 dustup to be the metaphorical equivalent of this, Mark Blumenthal’s comments here suggest that Research 2000 is, well, toast.

By far the most troubling part of [Research 2000 president Del] Ali’s response comes in these two sentences (left in their original form including typographical errors):

Regardless though. to you so-called polling experts, each sub grouping, gender, race, party ID, etc must equal the top line number or come pretty darn close. Yes we weight heavily and I will, using te margin of error adjust the top line and when adjusted under my discretion as both a pollster and social scientist, therefore all sub groups must be adjusted as well.

“Top line” in this context means the results for the full sample rather than a subgroup, but it still unclear exactly which “top line numbers” Ali is referring to. If he means the results of attitude questions — vote preference horse-race numbers, favorable ratings, issue questions or possibly even the party identification question — he comes close to admitting a practice that every pollster I know would consider deceptive and unethical. “Scientific” political surveys are supposed to provide objective measurements of attitudes and preferences. As such pollsters and social scientists never have the “discretion” to simply “adjust” the substantive results of their surveys, within the margin of error or otherwise. As a pollster friend put it in an email he sent me a few minutes after reading Ali’s statement: “That’s not polling. It’s Jeanne Dixon polling.”

Continue reading Pollster hammers in some nails to the R2000 coffin.