At RCP, Jay Cost considers the level of inaccuracy in this year’s primary polling and hypothesizes that it’s your fault:
In a primary campaign, voters must choose among candidates who are all of the same party. Partisanship therefore does not enter into their decisions…
***
…Consider that 48% of New Hampshire Democrats claimed to make their choice in the last week of the campaign. From a certain standpoint, that is incredible. If you think about all of the attention political junkies have paid to this race since last January – it is almost unbelievable to think that voters would not have decided months ago. But, if we put ourselves in the shoes of the average voters, and try to recreate their thought processes – it makes a lot of sense. Their partisanship cannot serve as a quick, easy guide. Thus, they have to take a good, long look at the candidates as people. Given their typical inattention to politics, the time when this happens is the last week or so.
As much as I like and tout Jay Cost here, I may have to question him on this one.
To be sure, as previously noted, there is reason to believe that a significant segment of primary voters may not pick up on policy differences and rely on a candidate’s persona.
What Cost fails to explain is why — with a typical inattention to politics — so many primary voters have been late deciders in this cycle, as opposed to prior cycles.
Duh. The media’s been scrambling this race from the beginning. Match the negative press on Romney against the dearth of negative stories on Hick. Or Paul. McCain’s every fart was momentum-propelling, and Giuliani who’s that? Oh yeah he was that guy that was caught in a limo with a whore I heard.
U.S. News & World Report quoted President Bush on the polls being so wrong. The N.H. polls were off by 16%. With that kind of a rubber yardstick, Bush can call himself a popular president.
Happyfeet has part of it.
Another bit is the maneuvering toward “Me first!” in the primaries. In previous election cycles it would only be about now that anybody needed to pay any attention. People don’t like paying attention to politics, in general — it forces them to at least briefly take the shitbrained egotists seriously; the default attitude is something like “Fine. Get on with it, assholes.” This year, the concerted shout of “YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE RIGHT NOW!” has caught people off guard.
Another factor is the near-universal unattractiveness of the candidates. On the one side we have an empty suit inflated by machine politics, a judgement-skimming ambulance chaser with good hair, and the old boss’s ex trying to parlay the divorce decree into control of the company; on the other, a septuagenarian ex-war hero, a televangelist, and a gaggle of nonentities who worry that the shade of gray in their suit might be considered too flamboyant. The one thing that all factions of both sides agree on is that Americans have too much money and the Government needs to correct that, and the one thing all the candidates have in common is that if you applied for a job and found one of them doing the interview you would know for sure it was a lousy place to work. Paying attention is painful, and people put it off as long as possible.
Regards,
Ric
Oh, and I forgot to mention, under “other”: the fast-talking New Yorker who sold grandpa the annuity his heirs have spent the last three years trying to collect on.
I think you could get a simple majority on a plebiscite with the resolution “shoot them all and start over.”
Regards,
Ric
Because they’re burnt out. By insisting on campaigning for the entire previous year, the pols have instilled a “pox on both your houses” mentality in a huge portion of the voting population. I know I’d die a happy man if I never had to hear Hilly’s screech-own voice again, or have Barry O’bama tell me about his nebulous plans for “change” again. And Mad Mac just makes me cringe.
All of you, SHUT THE HELL UP!
This is the first time I can remember that it wasn’t already decided before the primary election here.
Change wins, Bush is not running.
Here’s what’s wrong with the polls: they always suck, they always have, and they continue to. The fact that polling got anything right was coincidence, not science. You can’t find out what 300 million people are going to do based on leading questions asked of a specific 1800 people.