Can Polls Be Trusted?

If there is one thing the New Hampshire primary should have taught us all is that polls are unreliable, especially this year. There are too many dynamics at play that cannot be gleaned from simple raw data. I have said from the outset that polls will be ineffective because by their nature they are ineffectual for determining what a person is really thinking. The trouble with America today is that we are having a crisis of honesty. Many of us want to pretend we are somebody we are not. How many of us are willing to admit what is going on in the deep recesses of our minds and hearts? Too many of us want to be judged on what we say and not on what we do. The bottom line will be which group polled will be true to their numbers. Will all the women who say they will vote for Hillary come through or will all the whites who say they can vote for a black man come through for Obama. It will be really interesting to watch the pollsters squirm from here on out, because how can they have faith in any of their numbers?

If the poll numbers continue to not be supported by the election results, what shall we do then? Will the truth about America be exposed once again? There will be those who will find excuses for the disparity or the lack of honesty, but to those who are able to see; the truth will be “self-evident”. Anyone relying on the polls to bolster their candidate’s position in this race is just spitting in the wind. Until this thing is over all bets are off. I have read that many bloggers have questioned the methodology of the pollsters in New Hampshire. I don’t think it’s the pollsters fault or the Republican results would also have shown an anomaly. You can’t blame the pollsters if they are right on the one side and wrong on the other. Some have blamed the news media for mischaracterizing the race out of some desire to see Obama win. While there may be those who would relish writing the story of our first black nominee, this does not explain the drastic difference in opinion and reality.

There are other forces at work and we would be foolish and naïve to ignore them. If this were not so how could the pollsters have predicted McCain as the Republican winner, but were so wrong picking the Democratic winner using the same polling methods? As much as I want to believe that Hillary’s sudden surge was based on her emotional outburst that turned the tide, I think that for many New Hampshire voters when finally alone in that booth they faced a moment of truth about who they were and what they truly believed about Obama and America. I believe that this phenomenon will be repeated throughout this election process and it bodes badly for Obama and his message of hope. Sure, there will be those who will say that Hillary’s experience argument is finally getting traction with voters, but I don’t believe it.

John Zogby, who does the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, said the 18 percent of New Hampshire voters who reported making up their minds on Tuesday "is just an unprecedented number."

Like most polls, the last Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby survey ahead of the primary was quite near the mark for the Republican race, predicting McCain would get 36 percent to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's 27. The final result was 37 to 31. But on the Democratic side, the survey predicted Obama would have 42 percent of the vote to Clinton's 29, when in fact she won narrowly.[1]

The thing that I find interesting is how everyone in the media including the pollsters is running away from the race issue. This could be a defining moment in American history and I believe it will go unreported and the reason is because America will not want to face itself in the mirror with the truth. The truth is that despite all the hype of the media, the blogosphere, and the progressives America will not vote for a black man for President. It will be reported that it was everything but that simple truth. It is the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. It is easier to blame the pollsters than to look at what really happened. There will be those who say that was New Hampshire a rural white state, but so was Iowa. They will say that as we get to more populous states this will be a non-issue, but when it continues to happen what will you say then?

There will be those who point to Iowa as proof that I am wrong, but Iowa merely reinforces the rule by being the exception. Iowa was a caucus in which the dynamics are different than a primary. In a caucus you have a group of people in a room together, not the solitude of a voting booth which makes it a bit more difficult not to be swept up in the emotion. Iowa raised expectations to unrealistic levels and created hysteria heading into New Hampshire. The first thing I learned growing up as an athlete is never believe “the hype”. You are never as good or as bad as people say you are.

Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews.

I’ve experienced this myself. In 1989, as a Gallup pollster, I overestimated the support for David Dinkins in his first race for New York City mayor against Rudolph Giuliani; Mr. Dinkins was elected, but with a two percentage point margin of victory, not the 15 I had predicted. I concluded, eventually, that I got it wrong not so much because respondents were lying to our interviewers but because poorer, less well-educated voters were less likely to agree to answer our questions. That was a decisive factor in my miscall.[2]

So let me get this straight, the reason for the poll error is that poor whites are not polled and so there is no way to gauge their effect on the election? This is incredible, when all else fails blame it on the poor, white folks. Everybody knows that most of them are racists anyway. By placing the blame on their doorstep, the more affluent and cosmopolitan liberals can deny their own biases. I love it. This is almost as good as the alien hacking the election essay. One of these days we will have to gain the courage to confront our fears, because until we do they will always be our nightmares.

The reason I think this is a watershed moment is because we have the opportunity for once in over 300 years to be honest with each other about race and America. We can once and for all remove the façade that has allowed so many to sleep at night content that progress is being made and that Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell prove it. Rather than run from this “inconvenient truth” we can learn from it and use it to open honest and frank discussions about those dark secrets that we hold cloaked in our liberalism. The time has come for us to recognize the truth that is America, we love our blacks so long as they are not running the free world. This isn’t about experience, it is about can we trust a black man to be the most powerful man in the world? Let’s see we can trust someone with Alzheimer’s, we can trust a “compassionate conservative”, and we can trust a crook. We can trust a womanizer, we can trust an alcoholic, and we can trust a sexual predator. But God forbid that we can trust a black man.

I know there will be those who will make the same argument for Hillary, but this isn’t that essay. This essay is about confronting the demon that so many have chosen to ignore or only comes out around like minded folks or in the solitude of a voting booth. Of course we will never know exactly who these people are and this anonymity will provide cover for all. New Hampshire is a wakeup call, I hope the rest of America is listening.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0960368620080109?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=10003
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/opinion/10kohut.html

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Don’t Cry For Me America

In what is sure to be condemned as a “why I hate Hillary” essay I feel compelled to discuss the last few days of New Hampshire and what I think the consequences of Hillary’s performance will be in the long term. While it is true that for many voters, especially women Hillary’s emotional melt-down was a final deal maker for her eventual win in New Hampshire. The problem is that just like most things in America men and women can see the very same event and interpret it differently, I guess that whole Venus and Mars thing.

Before I begin, I would just like to say that I admire Hillary tremendously. I think that she was probably the more talented of the two Clintons, but due to the country’s unwillingness to elect a woman we got Bill instead. I think Hillary will do a credible job as President if elected, but she would not be my first choice. To me Hillary represents the past. Even though I enjoyed some of my best year’s income wise with Bill Clinton I have no desire to see the country go backwards for any reason. I also have issues with Hillary’s foreign policy positions and I believe that she supports the American empire which I will discuss later.

In many of the interviews I have heard from women after New Hampshire, a lot of the women (which Hillary carried 46% to Obama’s 34%)stated that the turning point for them in selecting Hillary was her tearful response when asked how she was handling the campaign pressure. For many women it was a defining moment in that it presented Hillary as human for the first-time in the campaign. More women seemed to have identified with her more following the outburst than previously according to the interviews. I for one find this hard to believe in that one of Hillary’s strong suits from the outset was going to be women identifying with her. If these interviews are true are we to assume that she had them and then lost them and then got them back? I think for a lot of women it will be difficult to cast a vote for anyone but Hillary as long as she is in the race. This is not to say that all women will support her, but because of her attempt to make history and her shared history with many women who feel frustrated with the “good old boy” network she will garner a lot of female support.

This is the upside of the outburst; the downside is that while many women saw it as a strength to be vulnerable and emotional, many men will take the opposite tack. This scene will reinforce their belief that women are not emotionally stable enough to handle the pressure of governing or making tough decisions, so while it was a benefit to one group it can be a hindrance to another. The real question now becomes who will be most affected by it. Will it draw more women to Hillary than she already had like it did in New Hampshire or will it push away men who would have supported her? Will the Republicans use it in the fall?

While there are many who will dispute my conclusions the truth of the matter is that there are a substantial number of men who will use this as an excuse to not vote for Hillary. Would these men have ever voted for Hillary? We don’t know, but what we do know is that there is a long history of misogyny in America. There is a reason that we have not had a woman as President. And despite popular belief there are a large number of women who will not support Hillary, just as there are a large number of blacks who will not support Obama.

I read that the woman whose question elicited the emotional outburst from Hillary did not vote for her in the primary. After doing some blog crawling I have also found that there are women who viewed the incident as a sign of weakness. We are living in crazy times where every move a candidate makes is scrutinized and used for political fodder by both sides. I personally do not believe that Hillary showing emotions disqualifies her or anyone else from being President. I for one am tired of the phony “cowboy” persona that has been perpetrated the last eight years. I would hope that we as a nation have evolved beyond the day when a candidate crying would be a disqualifying factor for office, but stranger things have happened.

Hillary stated in an interview that there is a double-standard being applied to male and female candidates. I agree but crying isn’t one of them. In what is affectionately referred to as a Muskie any man that cries on the campaign trail is as good as history regardless of the circumstances. I’m sorry Hillary but that dog ain’t gonna hunt. While it is true you receive more scrutiny in some areas, so do the other candidates in others. I don’t think any candidate gets more grief for their appearance than John Edwards. I have never heard of a man being too handsome to be President. So let’s be fair, there is enough meaningless reporting to go around and so there is no need to get sensitive.

“I actually have emotions,” she told CNN’s John Roberts on a damage-control tour. “I know that there are some people who doubt that.” She went on “Access Hollywood” to talk about, as the show put it, “the double standards that a woman running for president faces.” “If you get too emotional, that undercuts you,” Hillary said. “A man can cry; we know that. Lots of our leaders have cried. But a woman, it’s a different kind of dynamic.”[1]

As we continue this nominating process I am sure much will be made of the “boo-hoo” bump, but again it shows that we have a strange way of nominating people in this country. Will this be the moment that rights the Clinton ship and propels her to the nomination? It’s anybody’s guess, but for a lot of women it did solidify their solidarity with Hillary and for some it reminded them of why we need a woman in the White House. Maybe at some point before the convention we can get back to the important issues that are facing this country. Hillary Clinton crying in my opinion is not one of them.

[1] http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/08/clinton-i-actually-have-emotions/

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