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The Polls Are Crazy

Link here. The author does what I had been thinking of doing, of listing a bunch of recent polls that result in completely contradictory conclusions about where the November 2018 elections might be headed.

So how can we make sense of all of this? We can’t. Voters increasingly see the Democrats as extreme and out of the mainstream–no surprise there, since they are. Many Democrats want the U.S. to follow in Venezuela’s footsteps, but don’t want to admit it. Meanwhile most voters, while sensing this, also want the Democrats to control Congress.

My guess is that the polls are missing major currents that will become clear, as in 2016, only after the votes are counted. What those currents will turn out to be, no one really knows.

I can probably provide one possible explanation for why the polls “are missing major currents.” For the past year I have been routinely hanging up on robot-polls. I found them to generally be insulting, useless, and stupid. Then, about three months ago I got a live person conducting a poll, and decided to participate. It was centered on the Republican primary for Congress in my district, something I had not yet delved into.

I soon found it was a push poll, designed to make two candidates look terrible while a third God’s gift to heaven. This was as insulting and annoying as the robot-polls. Worse, it took about ten minutes of increasingly obvious questions to find this out, a real waste of my time.

Since then, I have been refusing to participate in any polls, live or robot. I have better things to do with my time. And I suspect I am not alone in this decision. The number of polls that have been calling our home sometimes rose to ten a day, most of which were fake push polls or stupid in their content. I can imagine a lot of people have responded as I have, which of course makes all the polls increasingly unreliable.

One more thing revealed by the polls at the link, though this really isn’t a surprise: The favorable opinion of socialism held by the young and Democrats is based on some astonishing and apparent ignorance:

Still, one wonders: how can any sentient being favor an ideology that turns a prosperous country into Cuba, Albania, the U.S.S.R., North Korea or Venezuela? The only explanation is invincible ignorance. Rasmussen sheds light on the nature of that ignorance: “Democrats are less likely to know what socialism is compared to other voters but have a much more favorable opinion of it.”

Rasmussen applied a simple criterion for socialism: “Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democrats…incorrectly believe the individual has more power than the government in a socialist system, a view held by just 12% of Republicans and seventeen percent (17%) of unaffiliated voters. Eighty percent (80%) of Republicans correctly say the government has more power in a socialist system, and 54% of Democrats and 67% of unaffiliateds agree.”

Ignorance about socialism is especially prevalent among the young: “Those under 40 have a much more favorable opinion of socialism than their elders do and are the strongest supporters of Democrats becoming a national socialist party. But younger voters are also the most likely to believe the individual has more power under a socialist system.

I read this and fear deeply for the future. The coming dark age is only a short journey around the corner.

Genesis cover

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.

 
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"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

11 comments

  • wayne

    “In Our Hands: How to Lose what we have”
    https://youtu.be/aXN2n8HcxaU
    11:53

  • wayne

    “Are You A Commie or a Citizen?”
    Responsibilities of Citizenship
    https://youtu.be/w86QhV7whjs
    9:48

  • Col Beausabre

    “Democrats becoming a national socialist party”

    I KNOW the author didn’t mean it that way, but we even have a name for that, the Nazis

    (OK, they were the NSDAP – National Socialist German Workers Party, but close enough)

    On the other hand, given the fascist behavior on the Left these days, maybe it was intentional….

  • wayne

    Col Beausabre-
    Good stuff.

    The Man in the High Castle Season 2 –
    “We Pledge Allegiance…”
    https://youtu.be/H4UHqFoB_5k
    2:44

  • Cotour

    WHEN THE POLLING IS OVER AND THE VOTE IS COUNTED

    http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/27/trevor-noah-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-agenda/

    Listen to where a segment of the Democrat party that many (Polls indicate in NY anyway) say they support is intending to go.

    Know nothing, naive, ideological socialists at the minimum proposing to confiscate massive wealth for their version of what the “greater good” is and run everyone’s lives from birth to grave. And you fear Trump talking to Russia? What happens after all of the wealth is confiscated and those who produced it are no longer willing to do so in the future? Then what? Socialism is a solid trajectory into the dirt and ensured chaos and authoritarianism. Its really an idealistic, self righteous and self assuring mental disease.

    Keep watching, Joe Crowley, D- NY, who is still on the ballot as an independent may just win the actual mid term election without even having to campaign because this young Socialist is not well enough trained to secret her actual policy positions like a run of the mill Socialist, Liberal Democrat would normally do.

    Her naive honesty is very instructive and should scare the hell out of everyone in America, out of the mouths of babes.

  • m d mill

    The coming elections will be extremely telling, the ultimate poll…Is the anti-leftist/liberal movement (ie Trump support) sustainable among the American middle class. I hope for the best, but have no idea which way it will turn.

    Have you noticed, neo-Socialists so often emerge and live in successful free market economies that provided them with the high standard of living and free time to ignore economic reality, and then denigrate the very system that gives them that wealth and free time? Its certainly easier than actually being personally successful or productive or responcible.

  • Cotour

    The gift that will keep on giving and giving.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2018-07-27/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-risky-road-show

    Things like this new and emerging “The best” in their field, incompetently promoting the wonderfulness of Socialism, and even the threatening of Republicans young children are really good signs (Something that do not support in any way, shape or form, other than it is an indicator). Why? Because it clearly demonstrates in real time, live and in color just how desperate the left is becoming and will further become until out the other end of this process emerges something. And what that something is still remains to be seen.

    The Democrat party’s existential death spiral is here, its real and it continues.

  • mkent

    One more thing revealed by the polls at the link, though this really isn’t a surprise: The favorable opinion of socialism held by the young and Democrats is based on some astonishing and apparent ignorance

    Yes, it is astonishing ignorance, but it is also very deeply held ignorance. Facts and logic fall off that ignorance like water off a duck’s back.

    In conversations I’ve had with Millenial socialists, I’ve almost always come away with the realization that they find the concept that socialism could possibly fail as literally unthinkable. If they mention the coming socialist paradise, and you respond with a comment about North Korea, Zimbabwe, or Venezuela, they no longer even try to defend it, not even with the cliches “That’s not true socialism” or “True socialism has never been tried.” They will just roll their eyes and move on, your concerns being too unserious to even warrant a response.

    Socialism to them is no longer in the realm of thoughts and ideas. It is in the realm of motherhood and apple pie.

    Of course, that doesn’t make socialism work, and that’s what makes the current situation so dangerous. When it fails — and we all know it will fail — there will not be nor can there be any re-examination of the desirability of socialism. There can only be a purge of its enemies. And history has shown that such a purge can entail the slaughter of millions. It’s where we are right now, even in the USA.

  • wayne

    mkent–
    good stuff.

    Jordan B Peterson debunks the “It wasn’t real communism” argument.
    (excerpt)
    https://youtu.be/VsZJ0fJpLPc
    (2:00)

  • Michael G. Gallagher

    Be comforted by the 330-350 million guns in private hands in the USA.

  • Cotour

    Even Obama sees how the new flavor of “Democrat Socialist” ( Read: Radical Leftist ) representative, at least this particular one who is just too honest and has not learned how to mask her true agenda like the leadership of the Democrat party and the DNC, threatens the Democrat party.

    https://www.mediaite.com/online/barack-obama-releases-list-of-dem-midterm-endorsements-see-if-you-can-spot-ocasio-cortez/

    The other day I went for coffee, the woman at the counter tells me that a female customer that we both know came in this morning with her husband and quietly came up to her and asked her, “Are you a Dem?”. She replied “Yes” (But she is not she was just interested in what she was up to).

    Keeping in mind that I live in the district where the newly minted Democrat star Ocassio / Cortez will be the candidate for congress this November. The woman said to the counter woman “We are having a secret meeting, let me know if you want to attend I will see if I can get you in there is not a lot of room” ;)

    “Secret” meetings, this is what is beginning to happen here. They have either lost their minds totally and are strategizing to see how they assure the Cortez election, or they realize that she is a great and too honest liability and are conspiring to vote Crowley who will still be on the ballot under the independent party.

    Now I have also spoken to some who are just soooo excited that Cortez won, but I can also imagine Crowley retaining his seat for the obvious reasons. This will certainly be a very interesting election to say the least as we witness the further uncontrollable cleansing (?) / destruction of the Democrat party.

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