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Good or bad, campaigns dance around the polls; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; September 29, 2012.
According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.
You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.
Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.
“It’s been a Battle of the Polls in Pennsylvania, and things are looking especially bad for GOP hopeful Mitt Romney. No, wait, they don’t look bad. Yes, they are bad. Awful, actually. Stop. It’s close. He can win!”
[RWC] I tend to ignore all election polls regardless of the sponsoring group or the actual polling organization. I’ve come to the conclusion polls are simply another means to affect the election outcome. Though a properly conducted poll can be useful, it’s too easy to manipulate the results by the questions asked, how the questions are asked, the order of the questions, who is surveyed, the time of day, cell phone or landline, et cetera. The only poll that counts is the actual election.
“Heehee. That was just our impression of the battling pollsters and grasping-for-straws Republicans who are holding out hope that Mittens still has a chance in the Keystone State. Awwww. Isn’t that cute?
“Anyway, most polls have had President Barack Obama with a consistent and comfortable lead here regardless of what Beaver County will do. (Psst. Beaver County’s not going to vote for Obama. That’s just between us.)”
[RWC] As a reminder, Mr. Prose at least twice credited racism (here and here) for Sen. Obama’s 2008 loss in Beaver County. That could be the result of projection on Mr. Prose’s part. That is, despite the content of his work, Mr. Prose didn’t vote for candidate Obama in 2008 and won’t vote for him this year because of Mr. Obama’s skin color and assumes that’s why others didn’t/won’t vote for Mr. Obama. Only one person will ever know if that’s correct.
“On Wednesday, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing Obama up 54 percent to 42 percent with likely voters, while a Franklin & Marshall College poll had likely voters supporting Obama 52 percent to 43 percent and registered voters favoring him 50 percent to 39 percent, according to our friends at PoliticsPa.com.
“F&M had Romney favored 60 percent to 28 percent in southwest Pennsylvania (Motto: We’re the Alabama of Pennsylvania).”
[RWC] The Franklin & Marshall College Poll indicates “southwest Pennsylvania” does not include Allegheny County (Romney 35%, Obama 57%). The “southwest Pennsylvania” and Allegheny County figures are for registered voters, not likely voters. The poll report didn’t provide county-level data for likely voters.
If you’re wondering what “the Alabama of Pennsylvania” is about, please read my critique of a Lonzie Cox letter.
Here’s a factoid Mr. Prose failed to note. The F&M poll claims white registered voters are Romney-42% and Obama-47%, while non-white registered voters are Romney-6% and Obama-87%. Religious affiliation is also interesting: Catholics are Romney-44%, Obama-45%; Protestants are Romney-48%, Obama-40%; Other/unaffiliated are Romney-19%, Obama-72%. The poll report didn’t provide the skin color and religious affiliation data for likely voters.
“With Mittens’ prospects looking bleaker and bleaker in battleground states (see Ohio), GOPers got a little testy and started blasting the polls ... except for the Fox News one that showed Obama leading 48 percent to 43 percent. That was just chalked up to ... um ... er .... socialism?”
[RWC] Here’s a reminder about how reliable polls can be. In 2004, though President Bush won re-election in Ohio, Ohio exit polls indicated Sen. John Kerry-Heinz (D-MA) won.
“There was also the now infamous Susquehanna Polling and Research poll for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which showed Obama with only a 47 percent to 45 percent advantage over Romney. ‘See!?!’ GOPers shouted.
“Nate Cohn of The New Republic took a hard look at the Susquehanna poll, which drew widespread skepticism, and concluded this: ‘Let’s not kid ourselves. They took a quick poll and missed young and non-white voters and then either didn’t weigh their sample or only lightly altered it based on their premonition that this would be a close election, rather than the responses of voters.’
“In other words, it’s BS.”
[RWC] You probably guessed The New Republic is a leftist publication, though that probably had nothing to do with its opinion. <g>
To wrap up, have you noticed in all his Republican-bashing pieces, Mr. Prose has yet to tell us why we should vote for the Democrat candidates?
© 2004-2012 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.