September 11, 2011 11:15:51 AM PDT
Well I can't see the poll, but I have seen these polls before.
USA Today is a liberal paper with a liberal readership, (The owner, editors and staff give the vast majority of their political donation to liberals and their causes) so their polls are not really indicative of the general population. Only way we (conservatives) can make them appear "fair" is to spam these polls. But it works both ways. We can skew their polls and they can do ours also.
As a population we vote 39% R 42% D 18% Ind. These numbers are very consistent over the past 2 cycles and MAY swing back to a straight 40-40-20 split in 2012.
You want to win at a national level, win the Independent voters and motivate your base to turn out at 100% (or in the Dems case, 110% when you count the dead voters)
But only 55 to 60% of eligible adults vote, (way less in non-presidential years and as little as 5% in small local "special" elections)
General consensus polls conducted scientifically and without bias have the US population supporting the 2nA by 5 to 1. 10 to 1 when they are asked: Do you support the right to self defense with a firearm.
Polls as a rule are a great way to get your agenda out to the public. Run a big enough sample, say 100,000 people and everyone want to know how you are so "plugged into" the people. Headlines means airtime for your agenda.
For the most part polls are over rated and poorly done, newspaper internet polls are the absolute worst. Completely unreliable and only good for headlines, not the truth.
Elections can be won or lost on polls, that why everyone run them all the time. You can "push" voters one way or the other based on what questions are asked, who you ask and what the results are and when those results are released to the public.
If more people understood polling data, they would not be as effective as they are in driving an agenda.
And we would not get called at dinner time 14 days in a row, right before an election.
