Tag: lies

Collusion between Obama for America and Priorities USA on ‘their’ lying Soptic ads.

The Story So Far: two days ago, the Obama administration – using the fig-leaf/cutout of Super PAC Priorities USA – accused Mitt Romney of being a murderer because a company that Romney used to own closed down a steel mill (several years after Romney left that company) and that meant that the wife of the husband who lost his job at that steel mill (one Joe Soptic) didn’t have any insurance after the wife left her job several years after the layoff and several years after all of that the wife was diagnosed with cancer and then died.  As Erick notes in the link above: if that’s an acceptable logic chain that legitimately leads one to a charge of murder, then (to give just one example) this administration murdered US Border Agent Brian Terry and Eric Holder needs to give himself up right now.

But wait!  It gets even more convoluted.  You see, the Media is balking – absolutely balking – at taking this line of attack seriously, and the Obama administration has already done its best to distance itself from the Priorities USA ad, to the point where Obama for America (OfA) spokesman Stephanie Cutter denied that they had any knowledge of Soptic’s story.

So… who’s that voice at the end of this conference call, Stephanie?  Your evil twin?

Continue reading Collusion between Obama for America and Priorities USA on ‘their’ lying Soptic ads.

#rsrh Today’s Quinnipac University poll.

A helpful suggestion for Quinnipac University: there was something weird – and, worse, apparently inconsistent – going on with its last round of state-level polling.  Take a look at this chart:

Q-Poll Actual
M O Diff M O Diff Shift
Florida 40 53 -13 48 51 -3 -10
Ohio 38 53 -15 47 52 -5 -10
Pennsylvania 40 54 -14 44 55 -11 -3

(Originally noticed by @NathanWurtzel) Key: M is McCain, O is Obama.  The above compares the difference between the ratio of McCain/Obama voters in Quinnipac’s latest poll (which had Obama by six in Ohio and Florida, and by eleven in Pennsylvania) by the actual ratio of McCain/Obama voters from 2008.  As you can see… yes, Quinnipac at least found Obama voters.  But it wasn’t finding McCain voters in Florida and Ohio; and while I take Sean Trende’s point that people tend to ‘forget’ that they voted for the loser I have to note that they apparently didn’t forget in Pennsylvania. I would also suggest that the fact that Ohio and Pennsylvania flipped its state government (including governorships) to the GOP in 2010, while Florida increased its Republican majorities, suggests that the electorate in none of those states has gotten more Democratic in the last four years.  Continue reading #rsrh Today’s Quinnipac University poll.

#rsrh QotD, The Partisan Breakdown Is A Feature, Not A Bug Edition.

Ed Morrissey, on the pathetic partisan (take that any way you like) breakdown (ditto) of the latest WaPo/ABC poll (46/49 Romney/Obama):

Today’s D/R/I is 32/22/38, which means this model would only be predictive for a turnout model where only 22% of voters are Republican.  Just to remind readers, the 2008 turnout split from exit polls showed a 39/32/29 split, and that was considered a nadir for Republican turnout.  In the 2010 midterms, the split was 35/35/30.

Take a close look at the Republican representation in WaPo/ABC polls this year. Starting in January, that has been 25%, 23%, 27%, 23%, and now 22%.  The pollster seems incapable of finding a representative number of Republicans for this poll series.  Perhaps that should give the two news organizations involved a hint about finding a new pollster.

Why should they?  The pollster is fulfilling said news organizations’ needs perfectly. Continue reading #rsrh QotD, The Partisan Breakdown Is A Feature, Not A Bug Edition.

#rsrh Quick observation on this Hot Air post on Biden’s gay marriage gaffe.

While I see Ed Morrissey’s point (I don’t know if I agree with it, but I see it) about whether it’s a big deal right now whether or not Barack Obama comes out in favor of same-sex marriage or not…

…it’s unimaginable that enthusiasm for Obama among black voters would suffer much, even if he reversed himself on gay marriage.  Even a slight reduction in turnout would be a rather doubtful assumption.  If Obama’s hold on this demographic is that fragile, he’s already lost the election.  The swing-state vote is a more realistic concern, but the current vacillation won’t help if those voters are keying on this topic, either, and they almost certainly aren’t.

Continue reading #rsrh Quick observation on this Hot Air post on Biden’s gay marriage gaffe.

#QotD, You Don’t Say? Edition.

The Christian Science Monitor, blinking through the sudden pain:

The poll by Gallup Inc. and USA Today showed Obama with 47 percent support in the 12 states and Romney with 45 percent, well within the survey’s margin of error of 4 percentage points. That is a tighter race than in March, when it found the Democratic president with 51 percent and Romney with 42 percent.

…You don’t say?

Moe Lane

PS: Interesting contrast with this, in some ways.

#rsrh *Another* video of Barack Obama’s lies and broken promises.

(Via @OrwellForce) The President really doesn’t want you to see the video below.  Or send it around to anybody who isn’t desperately trying to tell him or herself that it’ll get better for the Democrats any minute now.  No.  Really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltrSt1KEkOE

 

Continue reading #rsrh *Another* video of Barack Obama’s lies and broken promises.

#rsrh …Dagnabbit, I need better crosstabs on these polls.

I just had to throw out four hours of work on a post on Virginia’s Romney/Obama Head-to-Head situation because I don’t really have the data to answer the question What percentage of the white vote can Obama reasonably expect in Virginia in 2012? This is important because (what follows is very much back-of-the-envelope calculating, based off of the NYT exit polls) if Obama gets 40% of the white vote (the percentage he won in 2008) and nothing else changes, he wins Virginia; if Romney gets 68% (the percentage Bush won in 2004) and nothing else changes, then he wins Virginia, by about the same percentage that Obama did*. Unfortunately, it’s still too early to make any kind of confident statement about which percentage of the white vote each candidate will get.

But it’s looks like it’s going to be that demographic that’s going to be the key to VA…

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh …Dagnabbit, I need better crosstabs on these polls.

#rsrh A general suggestion to pollsters, particularly D-leaning ones.

Triggered by flipping through this Hot Air post… STOP MUCKING ABOUT WITH THE SAMPLE’S PARTISAN ID PERCENTAGES.  That trick doesn’t work any more.  Everybody knows by now to look to see whether the partisan breakdown of the poll matches the actual voter percentages in the last few elections; and when they don’t (like they didn’t in the last National Journal poll) the impact of the poll is thus diminished.  Also: it’s not like skewed polling makes a difference, either: there were a lot of polls in 2010 that effectively failed to downplay just how badly the Democrats were going to do that year.  Finally: don’t just not release the partisan ID numbers, either.  People WILL ask where they are.

Seriously, all that using skewed polls is doing at this point is convincing half the country that you’re not to be trusted as far as you can be thrown.  Keep that in mind.

Crunching the July 2011 Rasmussen trust numbers.

I stopped doing this in the middle of 2010, once it became clear that the real question of 2010 was how many hits to the head with the snake the Democrats were going to take before it was all over.  As the answer was “a lot,” I feel that this was a wise prioritization of my time.

But it’s a new cycle, so let’s look at the numbers – both the latest ones, and May’s.  Short version: Republicans are scoring better in nine out of ten topics that Rasmussen charts, and there’s a ten point lead on the economy.  Which, not incidentally, is the most burning issue for Americans these days. Continue reading Crunching the July 2011 Rasmussen trust numbers.

Fourth of July: REPUBLICAN BREEDING GROUND!!!!!

I suspect that the Democratic party probably doesn’t want to ever see this sentence from a Harvard statistical survey appear in a news story:

Taken together, the results indicate that Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican party.

…for fairly obvious reasons .  Short version: going to Fourth of July celebrations (using a statistical rule of thumb* of good weather = participation) as a child results in an increased possibility of voting Republican as an adult (it apparently doesn’t move the needle at all when it comes to voting Democratic).  Oh, and progressives are why the Fourth became a public secular holiday in the first place**.  Lastly: if you want to zap your kids into patriotism and/or Republicanism, the key dates to get them to a parade are from 7 to 10 for later partisan identification, and 15 to 18 for increased voter participation. Continue reading Fourth of July: REPUBLICAN BREEDING GROUND!!!!!