“While partisan activists tune in when their team’s big show is on the air, most unaffiliated voters view the conventions as a waste of time and money.”
Scott Rasmussen: “While partisan activists tune in when their team’s big show is on the air, most unaffiliated voters view the conventions as a waste of time and money.”
Read the whole thing. His analysis of the meaninglessness of the political conventions to the ordinary voter is right on the money. More significant, his willingness to separate himself from the political atmosphere of Washington and try to empathize with those ordinary voters illustrates clearly why he is today’s most reliable pollster.
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Scott Rasmussen: “While partisan activists tune in when their team’s big show is on the air, most unaffiliated voters view the conventions as a waste of time and money.”
Read the whole thing. His analysis of the meaninglessness of the political conventions to the ordinary voter is right on the money. More significant, his willingness to separate himself from the political atmosphere of Washington and try to empathize with those ordinary voters illustrates clearly why he is today’s most reliable pollster.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
That may be accurate but I dont think it is a good thing. Too many people are not engaged beyond the most superficial level locally or nationally. It also backs up the wisdom of Obama doing interviews with reddit and Glamor magazine. But while these low information people exist, it isn’t a good thing.
Well, with reddit, that is more a case of going to venues that only ask easy ego boosting questions.
I am not sure what changes could be made to conventions to make them more relevant to the uninvolved voters. By the very nature of the way they consume news, they don’t, and follow politics, they don’t, I doubt that returning to the way they used to operate would generate any interest from this group.
Its the age we live in, is it not? Investigative reporting being replaced by blogs, and even more to the point, twitter, where information is limited to a certain number of characters.
We won’t accept less…I mean more.
True – but it’s sad, darn it, that Journalism, once a repected profession, no longer seeks to inform – now it seems it’s more about either entertaining us or promoting a particular view – that used to be called “Propaganda” in the good old days. My Father, a Journalism major way back when, told me one of his Profs told his class to write a story about a particular event & said “If I can discern your particular viewpoint on it, then you’ve failed to do your job”. I’ve never fogotten that…
I don’t think anyone is getting the point of my post, which in this case was not to comment on the low quality of modern journalism or the short attention span of the modern public.
My point was twofold: 1. Scott Rasmussen is by far the best pollster around. He doesn’t push a point of view, he tries to accurately assess the view of the voters. And this column by him illustrates this clearly. 2. The general public correctly assesses the nature of the Republican and Democratic conventions (public relations shows) and thus assigns them their correct value, which is not much.
Even if the voters were brilliant and informed, that second point remains. If you want to really educate yourself about the candidates, the conventions are not the places to do it.
Right, Bob – sorry, I was just responding to the 2 previous comments. I did read the article & have a great deal of trust in Rasmussen’s methods – I just heard him this morning on WLS AM 890 (Chicago), talking to the morning hosts Don & Roma, and he said very much the same thing as this article. He said he doesn’t think the Conventions really matter or make much of a difference. However, I do think the GOP Convention was good from the standpoint of featuring women, minorities, and having an overall positive message. If Dems come back with angry-sounding attacks & a more negative message & try again to paint the Repubs as anti-women, anti-minority, anti-immigration, I don’t think that will fly. Sorry – there I go again, getting off topic ! ! Anyway, we always appreciate your insight…
No need to apologize. I just wanted to make sure people got my point.
As for the conventions, I get very bored with propaganda, even propaganda I agree with. The reason that Clint Eastwood’s speech has resonated so well is because it wasn’t propaganda, it was the heartfelt thoughts of an ordinary citizen. (Eastwood might be a great actor, but when it comes to politics, he is as ordinary as the rest of us.)