That Steaming Manure Pile of Political Polling

July 26, 2012

As I sit down to write, I’ve just returned from shoveling manure at the barn.  Which makes me ideally qualified to comment on the latest NBC/WSJ poll, as it’s a stinking pile of horseshit, too.

Last week’s CBS/NYT poll sent a shudder through the obama-cult chattering class.  Showing a drop in Dear Leader’s approval/disapproval rating from an already anemic 42/46 to a ruinous 36/48, the CBS poll was generally perceived as indicative of the backdraft of obama’s decision to go nasty on Romney.

With the writing seemingly on the wall, obama’s sycophants braced for more bad news.  Would the upcoming NBC/WSJ poll confirm the worst?

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Do You Believe in Miracles?

The progosphere gave a collective sigh of relief when a veritable miracle occurred yesterday.  The PRAVDA  MSNBC poll showed obama with a slim 49/48 approval advantage, and a comfortable 49/43 lead over Romney in the ubiquitous “if the election were held today…” question.

To get these stellar results, all NBC had to do was survey +11 Democrat/Lean over Republican/lean (a D/R/I of 46/35/19). In comparison, the D/R/I in the 2010 mid-terms was 35/35/29.  In 2008, D/R/I was 39/32/29.  Rasmussen currently estimates it at 34/35/31.

Let that sink in for a moment:  +11 Democrats yielded +6 support for obama.

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Working Overtime at the Fudge Factory

With so much riding on this poll, NBC took no chances that it would turn out unfavorably for its employer, obama.  Across the board, segments preferential to obama were over-sampled:

Group                             NBC     USA

Bachelor’s                      24%    18%

Post-grad                       18%     10%

Union household          20%     17%

2008 BO/McCain          +9        +6

NBC’s population also comprised registered voters (RV), who consistently show greater preference for obama than “likely voters” (LV), which is a technical term used by pollsters when referring to those people who are likely to vote in the upcoming election.

As a hint to how likely NBC’s sample will find their way to a polling booth on November 6th, 12% didn’t vote in 2008.  Another 4% can’t remember who they voted for.

Yet everyone accepts NBC’s results with a straight face.  Real Clear Politics robotically plugs it into its influential RCP averages, alongside results from firms that survey “likely voters” (see above for definition), like Rasmussen and Quinnipiac, also the only two pollsters to weight party identity.

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Just An Outlier

Ah, but Rasmussen is a “conservative polling outlet”, we are reminded by the completely neutral The Hill.  Its polls are just outliers that can be safely ignored.  Rasmussen has indeed received criticism in the past for missing the mark, particularly in 2010.  Its methodology for determining party identification has also been questioned.  Is Rasmussen fudging its results, or just applying a more sophisticated approach to gauge the current political waters?

obama lackeys, desperate for good news, struggle to interpret auguries contained in the plethora of conflicting polls. As a rule, they pounce on any poll favoring Dear Leader, while viciously lashing out at any negative results, and not just those from Rasmussen.

  • In May, at the height of its push of the “War Against Women” meme, OFA got all in a tizzy after a CBS poll showed Romney leading among women;
  • Kos refuses to believe that Romney is ahead!
  • This minor blogger’s reaction epitomizes proglodyte, head-in-the-sand approach: “The 36% favorability … just is too small to be believed”, she insists, pointing to contrary numbers from earlier (Dem-skewed) polls;
  • Over at the once regal, now tawdry, The New Republic, Nate Cohn assures the Faithful that the 6-pt. approvals drop in CBS’ poll “just wasn’t as bad as it might seem.”  How so? Because CBS “has consistently found Obama with lower favorability ratings.”  Which, of course, can’t be true of our beloved barry, so “those numbers were fairly meaningless”;
  • Little Ezra, WaPo wag and obama butt-monkey, has a sure-fire approach to sleeping at night:  “ignore individual polls” and trust in the RCP average, which shows obama with “a small but persistent lead of between two and six percentage points….”


 In April, Mother Jones columnist, David Corn, attempted to wrap his big, ivy league-educated brain around the perplexities of the wildly fluctuating polls.

“[T]here is a fundamental dynamic to the race to consider: Many voters tend to like Obama but are disappointed [in] the economy. And many voters—perhaps some of the same voters—don’t like Mitt Romney … but they fancy the idea of a business-savvy Mr. Fix-It who can turn around the economy. Consequently, voters in the middle … will be tugged in opposite directions over the next five-and-a-half months, as they sort out conflicting impulses. Consequently, poll results will see-saw.”

Eureka! the genius Corn has solved the riddle of the shifting polls — those dullard voters who are not members of Phi Beta Kappa simply change their tiny minds from one day to the next.  Consequently, it has nothing to do with those wide anomalies in party affiliation from one poll to the next.

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Comparing Apples to Oranges, and Kumquats and Lingonberries.

Such divination is impossible so long as assorted pollsters proffer results like the latest out of Michigan. Rasmussen has obama +6; Mitchell, Romney +1; and PPP, obama by a whopping +14!  In 2008, obama won Michigan 57/41 over McCain (+16).  PPP would have us believe that support for the Hopey-Changey One has remained virtually intact among Wolverines.

What’s behind the disparity?  Mitchell is a local firm about which I admittedly know very little.  Public Policy Polling (PPP) is an openly pro-Democratic shop.  Founded by a prog activist, and frequently working hand-in-hand with Daily Kos and SEIU, PPP readily admits it skews its samples.  It also relies on IVR, generally considered less accurate than live calls.

PPP cleverly varies its methods of distortion from poll to poll.  Usually, its Democrat proportion hovers in the mid-forties. Other times, it will increase union household representation three-fold.  As a favor to Kos, PPP notoriously found Scott Walker and Tom Barrett dead even just before the Wisconsin recall vote.  PPP always makes sure to issue one honest poll just before an election to substantiate its boast of accuracy.

In its recent Michigan survey, PPP had a D/R/I of 32/28/40 — only +4 Dem, in line with that state’s voter registration. But the high indy is odd.  Delve deeper into the crosstabs, and we find 31% of respondents described themselves as “moderate”.  Yet these moderates split 70/20 obama v. Romney.  Has PPP detected a silent groundswell of obama support not reflected in any other poll in the country, or is something fishy going on?

Many other pollsters release skewed results without bothering to weight the samples.  A May national poll by Reuters with a D/R/I of  47/38/15 (D +9) had obama up by +7.

Again:  +9 Dem yielded +7 obama.

On the whole, big media outlets polls consistently skew democratic, including, for reasons unknown, FOX.

Even without all the intentional distortion, it’s foolish to equate polls of RV with LV.  In the past, RV polls have averaged +2 to +4 support for Dems vs. LV.  RCP blends 24 Michigan polls for its latest average, which has obama +4.2:

  • The 15 surveys of 10,768 LV, yielded +1 obama;
  • The 9 surveys of  7,082 RV yielded +10 obama.

Of the nine RV polls, six were by PPP and two by NBC.

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Why Serve Fudge?

Wouldn’t it be in the best interest of polling firms to produce the most accurate results possible?  It would if their only motivation was their reputation.  Hence, the results from the established firms all fall within a narrow range, and show a very close race with low approvals for both candidates.  But as we saw, places like PPP are in the bag, while others hire out to the highest bidder; MSNBC is nothing less than obama’s ministry of propaganda.

Falsely inflating obama’s support helps his campaign in a number of ways.  If approvals for Romney can be shown as weak, it bolsters OFA’s attempt to portray its opponent as unlikable.  And a recent Pew poll shows many voters still forming an impression of Romney.

That same Pew poll, however, revealed that 90% of voters feel they already know enough about obama to make up their mind  — and most find him unpalatable.  From these figures, analysts have extrapolated that “the president’s approval rating among undecided voters is languishing in the 20s.”

Which makes preventing despondency from infecting obama’s own base paramount.  Enthusiasm among Democrats is down 22% from 2008, while GOP enthusiasm is up 16%. (Yet another poll, this one by Gallup.)  Until news outlets like RCP get more discriminating, a smattering of outrageous polls will suffice to mask the crumbling of obama’s support.

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Call It What It Is

We now live in a fact-free society, where everyone feels they have the right to say whatever and believe whatever.  Enough is enough.  Next time you read or hear someone cite one of these ridiculous polls, speak out and call it what it is: ‘a load of horseshit!’


(c) 2012 by True Liberal Nexus.  All Rights Reserved.

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A Bipartisan Approach to Strengthening the Economy

July 23, 2011

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

July 23, 2011

WEEKLY ADDRESS: A Bipartisan Approach to Strengthening the Economy

(Note: True Liberal Nexus has acquired the unabridged version of this speech.  Sections deleted from the version released by the White House appear in italics.)

For years, the government has spent more money than it takes in.  The result is a lot of debt on our nation’s credit card – debt that unless we act will weaken our economy, cause higher interest rates for families, and force us to scale back things like education and Medicare.

Now, folks in Washington like to blame one another for this problem.  But the truth is, neither party is blameless.

Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, are just much to blame as Republicans like John Boener and myself.

And both parties have a responsibility to do something about it.

Every day, families are figuring out how stretch their paychecks – struggling to cut what they can’t afford so they can pay for what’s really important.  It’s time for Washington to do the same thing.

Because, just like a family, the government has no way to raise extra cash by selling bonds, printing money, or simply raising the debt ceiling every few months.

But for that to happen, it means that Democrats and Republicans have to work together to do what’s right for the country.  Everyone is going to have to be willing to compromise.  That’s why we need a balanced approach to cutting the deficit.

And by balanced, I mean making all the cuts the Right insists on, without any of the revenue proposals from the Left.

We need an approach that goes after waste in the budget and gets rid of pet projects that cost billions of dollars.

Like my wars. Except we’re not touching any of those.

We need an approach that makes some serious cuts to worthy programs – cuts I wouldn’t make under normal circumstances

— unless I had this debt limit crisis as a smoke screen.

And we need an approach that asks everybody to do their part.

Everyone except the wealthiest 2% of the population.  They’re better than the rest of you, and shouldn’t be imposed upon to give up a penny more of their well-deserved fortunes. 

So that means, yes, we have to make serious budget cuts; but that it’s not right to ask middle class families to pay more for college before we ask the biggest corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

Which is why the proposal includes a lowering of the top corporate tax bracket. 

It means that before we stop funding clean energy, we should ask oil companies and corporate jet owners to give up the tax breaks that other companies don’t get.

Don’t get me wrong, we will be killing clean energy funding.  But that jet thing alone will cover a whopping .075 % of the deficit reductions.

Before we cut medical research, we should ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.  Before we ask seniors to pay more for Medicare, we should ask the wealthiest taxpayers to give up tax breaks we simply cannot afford under these circumstances.

This assumes that the Republican-dominated congress will allow those tax breaks to expire next year, but I’m going to get the ball rolling by cutting Medicare today.  There’s also a clause that ensures that Social Security, even though it’s self-funding, will be gutted as well.

That’s the heart of this approach: serious cuts, balanced by some new revenues.

To be specific, 74% cuts balanced equally by 26% revenues.

And it’s been the position of every Democratic and Republican leader who has worked to reduce the deficit, from Bill Clinton to Ronald Reagan.

Following in the footsteps of those two presidents, I intend on standing firm and giving my opponents every single thing they demand.

In fact, earlier this week, one of the most conservative members of the Senate, Tom Coburn, announced his support for a balanced, bipartisan plan that shows promise.

That’s no surprise, considering that plan is a conservative’s wet dream co-authored by Coburn.

And then a funny thing happened.  He received a round of applause – from a group of Republican and Democratic senators.

A group known as the “Gang of Six”, the other co-authors of that plan.

That’s a rare event in Washington.

See, I told you my mojo would transform politics.

So there will be plenty of haggling over the details in the days ahead.

But don’t worry — anyone who opposes my plan will be labeled a racist.


But this debate boils down to a simple choice.  We can come together for the good of the country and reach a compromise; we can strengthen our economy and leave for our children a more secure future.

Or we can sell our country down the river, complete the destruction of our economy, leave our seniors out in the cold, and ruin the future for our children.

Well, we know the right thing to do.  And we know what the American people expect us to do.

But the corporate donors to our re-election campaigns expect us to do the opposite.  And they’re the ones running the show, not you sorry dupes.


So, fuck you, America, up the ass, and goodnight.

— Barack


(c) 2011 by True Liberal Nexus.  All rights reserved.

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Remarks by the President on the Monthly Jobs Report

July 10, 2011




My fellow Americans,

I’m happy to report that I’ve finally found a solution to the jobs crisis — I’m blaming it on Congress.

You see, while I’m ready to roll up my sleeves over the next several weeks and next several months, Congress is lollygagging.  This is so frustrating!  I’ve urged Congress not to wait, but to act right now on some brilliant proposals of mine:

  • Invest in rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our railways and our infrastructure.  (I came up with this one);
  • Streamline our patent process.  Widgets & wangdoodles would already be pouring out of American factories, if Congress would only vote on the patent bill sitting there right now;
  • Advance trade agreements that will help businesses sell more American-made goods and services to Asia and South America.  Congress could do that today. That could be done right now.

There are all sorts of bills and trade agreements before Congress right now that could get all these ideas moving. All of them have bipartisan support. All of them could pass immediately. And I urge Congress not to wait.

It’s really not fair that Congress’ inaction is forcing me to work on this, because I’ve already done so much.  In December, I boosted the economy by signing a tax cut that put a thousand dollars in the pockets of American families, which is nothing to sneeze at when you’ve been out of work for over a year.

A lot of middle-class families sure would feel more secure if they knew that tax cut will still be around next year. That’s a change that we could make right now, by making cuts to Social Security.  But Congress is too lazy.

I admit, it’s not entirely Congress’ fault that our economy sucks so bad.   There are many other things I can blame, from natural disasters and spikes in gas prices, to state and local budget cuts.  And those Greeks and Europeans had to go and ruin everything by giving investors the jitters.

These economic challenges weren’t created overnight — they’re W’s fault.  So don’t expect me to solve them overnight — I’ll need another four years at the least.

I get letters from folks hit hard by this economy.  Some of them pour their guts out in these letters. They feel that leaders in Washington have let them down.  To them, I say:  yes, Congress has let you down.

You can see how I’m busting my butt.  But I can only concentrate on one thing at a time, and we can’t solve the jobs crisis until we solve the debt ceiling crisis first. To put our economy on a sounder footing, we’ve got to rein in our deficits and get the government to live within its means, while still making the investments to make us more competitive in the future.  I’ve urged Congress to quickly move in both these contradictory directions, but they refuse to budge.

Still, we’ve had some good meetings with Congress.  We had a good meeting yesterday, and we’re gonna meet again today.  We’re gonna work through the weekend to solve this crisis with as many meetings as it takes.

Once the markets know that we have a serious plan to deal with our debt and deficit, they’ll start investing to grow and hire.  That’ll provide more confidence to the rest of the world as well, so that they are committed to investing in America.  And then — Presto! — the economy will be fixed, and I can go back to my real job, running for re-election.

I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

— Barack


(c) 2011 by True Liberal Nexus.  All rights reserved.

2 Comments | Democratic ineptitude, Economy, Satire | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Matt