Pollsters Are Annoying #289
By Hank Silverberg
Commentary
It's not that I mind expressing my opinion anonymously to a pollster who may work for one of the candidates or one of the big polling companies. It's just the questions are sometimes repetitive or require an answer not among the answers provided.
Many of them are "yes" or "no" with no shades of gray. Even though everything has a shade of gray. Yes or No are rarely good answers.
Then there is:
"Candidate A thinks nuclear war is a good thing while candidate B says peace is better:
Are you:
More likely to vote for candidate A
Somewhat more likely to vote for candidate A
Somewhat less likely to vote for candidate A
Much less likely to vote for Candidate A
But there's no option to say I will never under any circumstances vote for candidate A.
And the pollster requires you to sit through all the answers before you can tell them which you choose.
This can be even more irritating on the question:
What is your age?
Okay, I tell them I'm 69. But no, they make you listen to the list of age groups before you can answer.
Then there's the question about your income. I don't care if it's anonymous or not. No one is getting that information, and when I tell the pollster that they get really agitated.
Finally, there are the slanted polls, where you can pretty much figure out that the pollster is working for a specific candidate.
Example of a question:
Candidate A is a Marine veteran, a family man who defends the 2nd Amendment and is against murdering the unborn.
Candidate B is a dirty-rotten scoundrel, part of the swamp, who wants to take away your money with higher taxes and has been in Washington too long.
Does this make you more likely to vote for Candidate A.
Somewhat more likely to vote for Candidate A.
Somewhat less likely to vote for candidate A
Much less likely to vote for candidate A.
No place to say you don't like candidate A and would never vote for him.
Polling is a political science. But it is also a mathematical scam of sorts, even when it's done right by professional pollsters, which is not always the case.
They will poll 500 likely voters in a large state and draw conclusions on who is ahead in an election many people haven't even thought about yet.
I haven't trusted polls in years. The only one that really counts is the one on election day (counting the early votes and absentee ballots, of course).
News You May Have Missed
On that Note:
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There is one part of a recent poll that stands out, even though the Economist only polled 1,396 likely voters nationwide.
It shows Joe Biden running dead even with Donald Trump at 42% for the general election, while a poll done the same week by Fox News shows Biden leading 50% to 48%.
More interesting though, was the "disapproval" rating for the U.S. Congress. In the Economist poll that now stands at 64% with a steady upward trend.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
Do these polls mean anything?
Yes! The race for the White House is very close and Americans more and more do not like what the U.S. Congress is doing. Or should I say, NOT doing.
Monolith
"Open the pod bay doors, Hal." Another strange monolith has been found and removed from a mountain range near Las Vegas. No one knows how the 6-foot-4 glimmering metal prism got to the vast Desert National Wildlife Refuge, but like such mysteries in the past, it evoked the objects that appeared in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1968 movie
2001:A Space Odyssey.
 |
| (Courtesy of the Las Vegas PD) |
This one was torn down by local authorities in Nevada who were worried it could attract a large number of on-lookers to a remote area far from any trail in an environmentally sensitive terrain.
In all cases the mystery remains. Who put the monoliths up and how did they get to each location?
Comstock Rises Again!
In 1873, a man named Anthony Comstock, a so- called morality campaigner at the time, brought an
The result of his campaign was The Comstock Act, which did not ban such items, but prohibited sending them through the mail.
It is technically still on the books. And now, pro-life advocates, unable to gain enough support in Congress for a federal abortion ban, are trying to use what's left of The Comstock Act to prevent any medication or medical devices related to abortion from being sent by mail, pretty much making it impossible for them to be acquired and used. That would not just affect abortion, but it could also have an impact on the availability of contraceptives and health care for women who suffer miscarriages or have hormonal complications.
There is an attempt in both the House and Senate right now to repeal The Comstock Act, but that is not likely to happen in the highly charged atmosphere of a presidential election.
Republicans in Congress continue to push for a federal abortion ban, even though recent polls from the highly reputable Pew Institute show 63% of the public believes abortion should be legal in all or in most cases. It's a trend Pew says has existed for two decades.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
Dumbest Quote of The Week!
If you have not heard about Project 2025, you should find a copy and read it. It's produced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and it outlines what they hope and expect Donald Trump will do if he is re-elected in November.
It includes dismantling a number of government agencies, including the Department of Education, and replacing thousands of civil servants currently working for the federal government with political appointees loyal to Trump.
Also among the plans is closing the southern border completely and --here's the bigger part--using the National Guard or even the U.S. military to round up the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the interior, a totally impossible and despicable move by any government. This week's dumb quote, therefore, comes from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in an interview on MSNBC:
"There are great plans using the Department of Homeland Security to return these people back to south of the border."
The position is immoral and frankly, un-American. But it is also totally impossible to do that without a massive disruption of our society and our way of life, which would most likely result in massive street protests and likely violence.
(Your suggestions and comments are welcome)
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