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Pollster looks deep for meaning on Presidential race (Lorentey at flickr.com)
With many polling firms all reporting a Presidential race that has remained boringly static for months, it is not surprising that some pollsters are trying to be extra creative to stand out from the pack. But this set of questions from an actual poll of swing states by Purple Strategy takes it to a bizarre new level. From Purple Strategy:
Purple State voters are more evenly divided about which candidate more closely resembles common animals. President Obama is seen as closer to the family dog (by 4 points), but independent voters connect Romney by 5 points. Obama is closer to a cat.
But which candidate is the snake? It’s a split decision. Overall, Purple State voters believe that Romney is more like a snake by a small 2-point margin. But there’s a 9-point swing among independents, who believe that President Obama is the snake in the race (by 7 points). With months of negative ads ahead of us, there’s plenty of room for movement on both sides.
The poll also asked about which candidate most closely resembled a fox and a lion. The public was nearly perfectly split on those two questions. While one could try to make some point about how Obama being more closely associated with house pets demonstrates he is more likeable, I can’t possibly imagine how anyone would find this data useful.
In fairness, though, the utter strangeness of the questions did get me to write about a poll with an otherwise completely uneventful result. Like basically all other recent polls, it shows the race close, but Obama has a slight edge. The race is Obama 47 percent to Romney 45 percent in the twelve swing states.
14 Comments
We have a presidential race between a soft-core servant and member of the capitalist class, and a hard-core servant and member of the capitalist class. Both favor oil drilling, gas fracking, secret warfare in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and Africa, international “free” trade pacts, corporate profits and lobbying, an “imperial” style presidency that is opaque and operates with impunity, etc. Both have signed into law the same health insurance bill. Both in the health care arena are bought and paid-for assets of the pharmaceutical industry. Both favor allowing greater jobs offshoring. One of them wants to further detax the rich, and will produce asshole “judges” in any available supreme court appointments. The other would prefer to mildly raise taxes on the rich, and will appoint moderate republicans to any available supreme court vacancies while claiming to appoint “liberals”.
The presidential campaign is about many things. The most direct contest however is between two differing visions of tax policy.
I personally think Obama is more like a hyena, whereas Romney is more like a dodo bird.
I think I should also point out that both favor greatly bailing out, consequence free, “too big too fail” bankers and banks, and do no favor bailing out the middle class.
Neither candidate has done anything truly substantial to combat the effects of the Great Recession on people who work for a living, and neither shows any inclination to do so. One candidate counted Goldman-Sachs as his number one investor in the last election, the other can probably count GS as among his top contributors in this election.
Cue the Obamatron, which will now start regurgitating the “lesser of two evils” claptrap, and expressing concern as to any supreme court appointments.
Sadly, however, we are looking at two remarkably similar candidates, and [Shorter Sixgill] I would be surprised if the electorate were taken by storm by either candidate or this fairly banal election. In fact, I think we’ve all been taken by drizzle and are stuck in the doldrums. It not surprising to me that pollsters are asking silly questions; we’re all bored.
A week of video exposing the more crooked of the two candidates as, well, a crook, just ain’t gonna make this election engaging.
What dipshittery. Waste of time and space.
I am encouraged by sixgill’s remarks. I concur. I can’t see anything but truth in them.
As far as the cat, dog, snake and rat analogies, each candidate and either individual represents the worst of these traits (which humans have imprinted on these wonderful animals).
Romney and Obysmal represent the epitome of pandering, soulless shitheels to have ever walked the face of the earth. Sorry fucking human beings. Both.
I don’t believe the Supreme Court argument at all. Once Obama is reelected (very probable, now that Romney is self-destructing) and faces no further pressures from his base, he is very likely to appoint an out-an-out conservative to the Court. Already Elena Kagan, his second Supreme Court nomination, is more than half way there, her major distinction prior to her Supreme Court appointment being the appointment of more conservatives to the Harvard Law School faculty (as a former Solicitor General, she has recused herself from half the cases that have come before the Court during her term, meaning that her true profile has not yet come out). Remember that Obama was a happily ensconced member of the University of Chicago law faculty–the most conservative major law faculty in the world.
Just shoot me now!!
Well, don’t……………. I’m not voting for either of these losers. They’re both bains on our lives.
Oh, and don’t think Obama’s appointment of a rightist to the Court will cool the ardor of the Obamabots. Far from it. His nominee, though conservative, will not have the complete fanaticism of a Scalia, Alito, or Thomas, allowing the ‘bots to continue to make distinctions, however minute, between Obama and the Republicans.
I agree. The campaign is proceeding exactly according to plan. The PTB know very well that the Willard doesn’t have what it takes to protect their deep interests, which include not engaging unwinnable wars foreign and domestic. Obama can and will hand them privatized Social Security on a platter, and won’t start a profit destroying war with China. Miit’s a halfwit and they know it. Unlike Bush, however, he’s a rich halfwit who tinks he’s a genius because he’s rich.
I think its time to ban Harvard Law graduates from holding public office
I vote rat-like – for both.
FDLers got their feelings hurt when single payer didn’t win the day, is it? Single payer is now a lot closer to happening than before Obamacare. Many more people will be added to Medicare, ie single payer. OTOH,Romney takes the position (this week anyways) that Obamacare must be chucked, and there goes all the new single payers. Taken a step further, you gotta like Romney’s cabinet choices now that corporations are people: Exxon Mobil as Energy Secretary. John Bolton Secretary of State. As for VP, Willard could name a Cheney-like figure to vet the VP for him, maybe Dick Armey would do it and likewise pull a coup and appoint himself VP. Sitting this one out is not an option.
I hear from more and more Democrats, that they’ll be voting 3rd Party this year. Green, or Justice (Rocky Anderson) seem to be good alternatives. It’s too bad that there is no actual ‘Democrat’ running for president. Should’ve been a primary challenge to the well-spoken moderate-centrist, conservative appeaser-in-chief.
As for the animal-trait poll; Obama’s definitely a forked-tongue snake.
One vote for: Obama is more dogshit-like.