September 23, 2012

Obama 46%, Romney 46%.

Today's Rasmussen tracking poll.
When “leaners” are included, the candidates are tied at 48%. Leaners are those who are initially uncommitted to the two leading candidates but lean towards one of them when asked a follow-up question.
Isn't it strange how the candidates are so precisely locked in an even standoff, when the newspapers are pounding it into our heads that the pathetic, miserable Romney hasn't got a chance? Where would Romney be now if the media gave him something close to equal treatment? Is it possible that the media's desperate boosting of their candidate is causing the electorate to tune out or even skew in the other direction? I think so. I find myself repelled by media bias. I've built up my defenses, which means I've now internalized the elaboration of the conservative position. I'm not even that conservative — I just know where the bias is, and I need to perform the correction for my own sense of balance.

Am I the only one who does this?

208 comments:

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Nathan Alexander said...

Next time write make sure to laws that achieve the stated, constitutional aim, you lying sacks of shit.

If you want to implement Jim Crow Laws, you have to do it like the Democrats do!

Democrats have the only experience in the US in vote suppression, which is why ritmo knows all about it!

Good thing the GOP doesn't want to suppress a single valid vote, we just want fair voting according to the US Constitution.

Too bad ritmo doesn't cares just as little about the Constitution as he does democracy and truth, i.e., nothing.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

mdbernie said...

Romney may yet win, and I think it is closer than the polls show. But the media views you find "biased" actually reflect one basic irrefutable fact: Romney is a really, really shitty candidate.



Let's grant you that for the sake of argument. Let's add on the fact that he has undeniably had a tough week or two. So how do you explain this? The data is from Gallup.

gk1 said...

I was in Hollister, California today (about 25 miles south of San Jose) going to the Renaissance faire and saw 5 Romney stickers in the parking lot and not one Obama sticker. Weird. On the 2 hour drive back I saw 1 new 2012 obama sticker and one old one from 2008. You would never know the election is in November. I wonder what people in Illinois and New York see?

1775OGG said...

It's so darned difficult to recall that our society, our country, truly is liberal in the classical sense but certainly not in the current political sense. Also, that media bias has been present for a long time, Walter Cronkite was in fact a socialist; recall his words that we lost Tet; in fact a hard won military victory. Also, that we lost Vietnam politically not our military. Edward R. too was a socialist yet much of the time he presented much real news.

Even today, with so much bias out there, it's getting harder to realize when we are getting hard facts and not Chrissy Tingle’s view. But even FNC's Shep and Chris Wallace often reflect their personal bias during their presenting; just not as blatantly as the MSNBCCBSABCCNN cheerleaders.

The MSM is doing this country a great disservice and when the time comes, surprise, they'll be at the head of the line going for "re-education!"

1775OGG said...

Just to be clear, FNC generally does a good job of presenting news and not opinions per se during its news shows, but still, often individuals bias sneaks through, no where as blatant as AlGore's favorit outlets.

Bruce Hayden said...

Ras isn't a hack. He is a pro pollster who makes a living on being right. He takes registered voters by party and weighs them proportionally to the current registration percentages and from there tries to poll likely voters.

This is, essentially, the big complaint with most of the polling. The problem is that the pollsters are not getting a representative sampling of D's, I's, and R's for a number of different reasons, including the use of land lines and the dates of sampling. So, they all weight their samples to get their polling data. And, yes, their weighting is typically disclosed if you dig deep enough.

Gallop, along with many of the D leaning polls, have been weighting based on the 2008 elections, where there were more D's and D' identifiers. But, Rasmusson is calling BS on that, pointing out that that runs contrary to the 2010 results AND that more people now apparently self-identify as R than D (significantly reversed from 4 years ago), and that has continued to increase since 2010.

We will, of course, have to wait for the election to find out who was right.

Now, if you do weight by current party self-identification, Romney blows Obama out of the water. We are talking him carrying the major swing states by 5-10 points right now. I don't think that very many thinks that is going to happen.

Right now, I think it silly to argue, like so many here, about made up numbers, which is essentially what is happening here. The candidates likely have pretty good numbers, but the ones that we get, even this late in the campaign cycle, are heavily fudged.

But, as we get closer and closer to the election, the biases will, I think, mostly disappear, because what the pollsters depend on for their reputations are how closely they predict the election results. So, if they predict D+5 two weeks out, and R+2 the night before, and Romney wins by 1 (or, of course, the reverse), they will be viewed as having been fairly accurate this year, and their previous predictions of a loss will be chalked up to a late surge.

ilvuszq said...

"Am I the only one who does this?"
Perhaps not. My solution to media bias is to not engage with media. If the medias viewership/readership was halved they would soon become more "fair and balanced"

1775OGG said...

Ritmo: Does history include knowing how LBJ was able to get his Civil Rights Act of 1964 bill passed by exclusively relying upon Democrat Party votes? Is that your recollection? If so, you failed because certain stalwarts like Al Gore Sr. and Fulbright, he of the world famous education grant fame, did not support that bill and LBJ had to depend on nasty old GOP votes to get it though the senate; just another nasty old fact.

Now, before you go on another ill-conceived rant, yes, old of those old Dixiecrats did switch to the GOP and you may if you wish, impugn their motives, which were less than noble, as their future behaviors were also less than noble.

Still, in the present day world, where many of us wish to live, AL Gore Jr. is not a good model of a tolerant man, Obama’s every act in office has represented his desire to wage racial politics, Slow Joe Biden is the very model of a racist clad in sheep’s clothing (Surprising exceptions might occur with old Joe.), and Rev. Al and Rev. Jesse are two of the best at hollering racist over every event, even when race is obviously not involved. So, live in peace, in that tiny little hole where your dark soul lives. Peace be unto you.

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