The Last Post

Episode IV: A New Hope

On Monday I had an ugly moment.
Hung over from a night of boobs and beer at Hooters, I walked passed the rag of polls called USATODAY and saw the ugly specter of Uncle Sam running across the United States with a headline that read "Bush up by 8 points." Or some such gibberish.
Immediately my heart sunk.
Why? Is a George Bush re-elect going to really screw up my life personally?
Probably.
But, more to the point, I don't watch sports. See, those with nothing but despair in their lives look towards the wins and gains of an awesome force of power to live vicariously through. And where your sportsfans of the world will tune in to watch the Seahawks lose miserably, I pay attention to politics. A win for Kerry will bring me out of the undertow that is my life for a brief five-day period after the election.
Now, a win for Bush will probably send me over the edge and I'll try to kill myself again using Ibuprofen and cooking Sherry.
So, when I saw the USATODAY I felt even more hungover and depressed.
But, then it occurred to me that USATODAY is basically like crack for Survivor junkies. Sure, it's a bunch of polls, news stories, and editorials based on real life; but, just like Survivor it's as far from real as Donald Trump's hair...or personality.
So, I immediately ran to my good friends at Zogby. CLICK ME
(P.S. I do the CLICK ME rather than put the link on the word Zogby because the hypertext is hard to point out in this stupid blog font.)
Zogby had the 96 race pinned by .1% and continues to be the IT pollster.
Numerous pieces of hope were found starting with Zogby. Zogby, currently, has Kerry and Bush in a dead heat in the popular polls, and Kerry with the win in the electoral college.
John Zogby has also made public his firm belief that Kerry will take this very, very close election.
But, what about USATODAY?
The poll, that they put on the front page like jackasses, was the sensational poll. It was the poll with the biggest gap.
They have all sorts of polls they run when finding out who is in the lead. The most popular are the registered voter and likely voter polls. Now, the likely voter poll is based on polls of people who voted in the last election.
I almost didn’t vote in the last election (Lieberman and Tipper Gore are Nazis).
But, that's not much of an argument. The real argument is that this poll doesn't take into account: cell phone only homes, the greatest registration of new voters since 1980, new to the polls 18 year olds, and all those so fractured out of the American dream that they're finally angry enough to vote.
This is the poll USATODAY put on the front page.
Now, in the same poll of registered voters, it was 48/46 (if I remember correctly) for Bush.
Again, keep in mind this has nothing to do with the Electoral Colleges.
But, again, when you look at the Zogby poll, you find that they are neck and neck, and a day later, Zogby even mentioned that the he's discounting large undecided portions that are leaning towards Kerry.
Also, in the Electoral Colleges, many of the states that were thought to be Bush's are within the margin of error. Where in the Kerry states, he's polling outside the MOE.
This is just a small snapshot, and obviously polls don't determine the presidency. But, I think it's a fair statement to say that Kerry has more than a good chance of turning out and upset for Bush this year.
Tony Danza once told me something that still sticks with me today "Keep hope alive!"
He was drunk and I ran into him in a strip club. It really has nothing to do with this blog, but I thought I'd mention it.
Peace.