Friday, August 11, 2006

Perceptions

Lorie Byrd talks about the effect of public perceptions on politics. She is not so sure Republicans are going to be destroyed this November. Neither am I.

I have a question: If the polls suddenly showed an upsurge of support for Bush, would their be one? Which comes first? Reality or perception?

3 comments:

Rick Ballard said...

Ethelned the Unready and the KosolaKidzKrewe reduced the race in CT to a single issue and won 52% of the Democrats in one of the more liberaly blue states in the country. If the indies split 52/48 Dem - the Dems are absolutely screwed.

The Dems can push poll 'til Nov. 6 but Nov 7 is the only day that counts and if you followed the Quinnipiac farce polling on Lieberman up until the end the value of any current polls is apparent.

Unknown said...

Rick:

Have you noticed that every time Bush gets to 40 on his approval rating he falls back? I know I sound like one of those KosKids myself but I question the timing, or something.

In fact I noticed that with polls across the board, it is weird.

Rick Ballard said...

It's not particularly weird - it's just toally dishonnest. The Quinnipiac polling was classic. Lieberman was shown down 13 and then a week later down 6-7 (he actually finished down 4). Unless he was caught in a dead girl/live boy situation there is nothing that could have moved the poll 9 points except it being crooked.

I've been through 38 House seats pretty carefully and I remain confident that the Dems don't have the horses - barring a huge incident. I still don't know how a big successful strike would pay off but the Dems current position is not one that allows them to take advantage of a strike.

Bush's numbers are still tied pretty tightly to the price of gas. Maybe the big oil companies will give him a nice present in October. They can afford to.