Oct 04 2010
What Will Gallup Show Today?
Update: Jay Cost has some alarming numbers of his own today, showing how independents now favor the GOP 42-30%. That kind of one sided support, combined with an enthusiasm edge with the anti-democrat (anti-big-government) side of the equation is a good hint for what Gallup could show today. – end update
I am waiting to see if Gallup is going to produce their generic congressional poll numbers today using ‘likely voters‘. As Jay Cost noted last week, these numbers apparently are going to shake the political establishment to its core. It took me a while to find the exact link on Gallup’s site, but a 2010 blog post had helluva tease in it:
Our latest measure for the week of Sept. 20-26 shows Republicans with a 20-percentage-point lead over Democrats in terms of the percentage of voters who are “very” enthusiastic about voting. Additionally, preliminary modeling of the likely electorate using Gallup’s traditional likely voter questions (more on this next week) suggests that if current patterns persist, Republicans could have a double-digit lead in the national House vote on Election Day, which would translate into Republicans gaining well above the number of seats necessary to control the House.
That kind of enthusiasm gap would be amazing. And it seems to fit with what we saw with the “One Nation” rally on The Mall in DC this weekend. This leftist attempt to show solidarity fell far short of the grass roots gathering coordinated by Glenn Beck a month earlier. The “One Nation” crowd was tiny in comparison to the Tea Party, libertarian, Constitution cheering Beck crowds – and 100 times bigger polluters. Seems green doesn’t count when visiting our nation’s capitol. Byron York noticed even that paltry gathering was primarily paid and orchestrated by unions – unlike the Beck gathering which was made possible by the 100’s of thousands who brought their families to DC to quietly protest a government run amok. Without union money and buses no one would have shown up.
All the signs are there for a historic wipe out come November, all the while democrat congressional leaders continue to stupidly claim they will still be the majority in November (the new congress is not seated until January, 2011). The far left is going to finally realize it does not represent America, but it is in fact a delusional fringe group of tired, worn out slogans from an era long gone.
Unions had their time, about 100 years ago. They were a needed counter weight to industry leaders who ran sweat shops and exploited children for profit. The days of the unions were replaced with the age of the small business entrepreneur. Now, using computer systems and commercial software (even cloud computing), companies can be set up by very small groups of like minded people who can make a good living. The information age has turned most workers into business people or consultants – not just workers. All those college degrees are paying off. The dems have yet to get out of the 1950’s and understand the sea change that has occurred.
Same thing with race relations. The only ones obsessed about race (and gender, and sexual preference) are the bigots on the left. Racism and sexism are not allowed and are universally shunned. Outside the quirky fringes on the far right (who are reacting to the far left) and far left, 90% of America lives their lives as Martin Luther King dreamed.
Finally, we get our news and views from the exchange of idea on the internet – especially from the electronic pamphleteers who have broken the monopoly on information once jealously held by the Political Industrial Complex. The people are not tied to DC leaders for information, ideas and making plans. The largest political group – of which I am a proud member – are independents. We can rationally blend the good concepts from left and right into a coherent set of goals (e.g., ecologically safe energy production). Liberals run around claiming CO2 is a poison and mankind needs to revert to preindustrial life styles. No there’s a plan!
The era of big government will be over, soon enough. The vast majority of Americans have grown beyond the need of the nanny state, or union bullies, or big corp rigidness. We stand on our own two feet, and we are preparing to dismantle as much of the federal bureaucracy as is safely possible (which will require many rounds of trimming and assessing to get it right). We will enjoy trimming back Big Government and returning our hard earn money to ourselves. This does not frighten us, since we handle just about all other aspects of society better than government could ever hope to do.
At least I believe that is the future we will glimpse today, when Gallup reports its first round of generic poll numbers using ‘likely voters‘.
Expect the gap to close somewhat as the election nears. We have a critical mass of persons who want the state to tell them how to live their lives.
Today’s Gallup of LIKELY voters shows GOP +13%
http://tinyurl.com/23g8nhc
A major blowout! sounds good to me!
I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in Hollywood, a lot of people made a lot of money – not just actors and writers and directors, but crew (props, sound, light, drivers, agents, hair-makeup-costume, managers, accountants and legions of assistants). They got married and had kids. They spent and spent and spent and spent and spent that money. It did not make them happy. They were impressing themselves, or trying, and impressing one another, or trying. It did not make them happy because they could see in themselves and in their friends that only inner happiness would ever make them happy, and that inner glow did not necessarily come from trophy wife or trophy husband. Their kids grew up and went to college, and the kids had learned that momma and daddy’s money did not make them happy, either, even though they were accustomed to it and expected it now. In bouts of rue and guilt, many of the aging baby boomer parents now think that they should have been made to give back some of that money – or at least that other people making it now should give it back. Put the cookie back in the cookie jar, particularly if they are looking at nice pensions which will enable them to get the kid through Harvard or UCLA or USC and find some meaning, perhaps, in the looming sunset of their lives. They have learned that they feel a little better in their lives when they give, not take, and they impose those feelings back onto politics in their thin, shallow way of investigating their own emotional lives and the political-economic life of the country which did so well by them. I do not know how universal this is among those who earned more, really, than they knew what to do with, but this is what I see.
[…] Government “underestimates” job losses by 902,000 last year. File under: had this happened under GW, the sky would have fallen. But whoopsie! say the Obami: we forgot to subtract another million jobs we destroyed! Speaking of jobs, there are none to be had. […]
Linked at Bread upon the Waters.