March 12, 2008
Spring Forward "Outliers"
Kathy Frankovic considers the Democratic superdelegates in the context of "poll after poll" showing Americans' "desire to have elected officials listen to them."
Frank Newport says "rank and file Democrats" are "on top of what's going on" regarding the controversies over Michigan, Florida and the role of the superdelegates.
Carl Bialik continues to explain the contradictory Democratic delegate tallies with a report on a "little noticed shift" of eight delegates in California to Obama.
Mark Mellman says the "analytic strategy" of projecting "primary performance into the general election" is "fundamentally flawed."
Jay Cost crunches past primary and general election vote data and generally agrees.
Paul Lukasiak mines the SurveyUSA 50-state polls for gender gap data.
The Wisconsin Advertising Project releases data on television ads in Ohio.
Gary Langer looks back and concludes that while Americans "suspected" that Saddam Hussein backed Al Qaeda, they did not affirmatively "believe" it.
By Mark Blumenthal on March 12, 2008 11:10 PM | Permalink
Gary Langer, quoted by Blumenthal, is full of it when he said that Americans "suspected" but not believed that Saddam backed Al Qaeda.
He cites a 2005 poll finding only 20% saying they believed the link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, but why didn't he choose 2003 or 2004?
A USA Today/Gallup poll in September, 2003, found that 70% of Americans "believe it is likely" that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists' strike against this country.
If Langer wants to argue semantics, that's another issue.
The media duped stupid Americans (not me) into believing the link existed.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm
Posted on March 12, 2008 11:56 PM