Get yer polls, bets, numbers & pretty graphs! Elections 2008

I think it is a matter of great importance. It is not just a region either. It is the district. Who is rubbing shoulders with who over lunch and in evening networks. And on exotic beaches.

LIMA, Peru " Barack Obama apparently can count on the support of a majority of Peruvian faith healers. Each of the 11 shamans in a Peruvian faith-healing organization said Wednesday that they have foreseen victory in the U.S. presidential race: nine for Democrat Obama and two for his Republican rival John McCain.

Blowing incense over a sacred llama fetus perched on a bed of coca leaves next to posters of the leading candidates, the shamans shook rattles, chanted "up, Obama, up!" and threw flowers at their images.

"Obama is growing stronger, I've seen that he has the spiritual support of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy to protect him," Juan Osco, president of the Apus-Inka healers association, told The Associated Press. "He's going to win."

Mary Gomez, a healer from the city of Chiclayo, said she has seen that Obama "will win and he will change history ... he is going to help all the Latinos living in the United States."

The shamans whistled, chanted and rubbed both posters with Andean spirit-totems, crucifixes, a statue of a dark-skinned Jesus and other idols to scare away bad spirits and negative energies they said might prevent a fair and democratic election.

"We are cleansing both of them so that on Nov. 4 the person that the U.S. really deserves wins," Osco said. "We have seen that if the election is not fair, there will be another global economic crisis, war and despair."

Pizza And Politics: Dems Like Variety, Republicans Like Size

Marc Ambinder
29 Oct 2008

Who isn't trying to profit of the election? Through the transom comes data from the well-respected polling firm of Noid... a.k.a. Domino's Pizza. They've somehow surveyed nearly 300,000 customers and found that a majority of those who responded are Obama supporters -- including a large majority of people who say they're independent. Whatever. The poll smells of...cheese, tomato and selection bias.

But Domino's Pizza also gives us these stats:

Republicans

-- Spend more per order than other consumers.
-- They rely on credit cards to pay more than other consumers.
-- They tend to order two large pizzas at a time, and they're usually
specialty pizzas.
-- They are more likely to order online, and more likely to pick up their
orders.

Democrats
-- Rely on delivery more than Republicans.
-- Pay cash more than other consumers.
-- Like more variety with their orders, opting for side items, chicken and
beverages more than Republicans.

And yeah, that's got effects, and those are not good. But where the HQ is, not so much.

Faith healers was a tough one, blatham.

Joel's Two Cents
Pollitis

By Joel Achenbach
I knew I had come down with something severe and hideous when, Thursday afternoon, roughly three minutes after I began looking at the latest polling data at Real Clear Politics, I refreshed my browser. Because what if there was an even newer poll! I didn't want to be three minutes out of date. A self-respecting citizen doesn't want to wind up in an awkward conversation like this:

Friend: Did you see the new Marist Poll?

You: Uh...not yet.

Friend: Loser.

I'm not a complete poll junkie yet, because I still don't know how to pronounce Quinnipiac. I know that, when someone uses the word "Zogby," that's my cue to laugh derisively, but what comes out is often just an insincere chuckle. The really advanced junkies know how to use "Zogby" as a verb, as in:

Husband: The way I look at these numbers, seems to me we should sell our Berkshire Hathaway and load up on GM.

Wife: Don't go Zogby on me.

Back in the day, there was just the Gallup poll, conducted by one guy, named Gallup, who got all his information door to door and at cocktail parties. Now there are so many polls that there are two different Gallup polls, one "traditional" and one "expanded," soon to be joined by a third Gallup poll, "invented," and a fourth, "imaginary." The situation has gotten so out of hand that the polls have actually begun breeding with one another, which is why you have mutant offspring with names like Fox News/Rasmussen and LA Times/Bloomberg.

The disease of paying too much attention to polls is well-documented and presumably listed in the DSM-IV: poll-itis. But there's an overlapping disease that is something of an artifact of the Internet age: electoralcollegeorrhea. This is incited by the wonderful maps at such sites as RCP, fivethirtyeight.com and The Fix. A good game is to see how rapidly you can take the projected Electoral College margin and tweak the different states to come up with a perfect 269 to 269 tie. I've done it in less than 20 seconds and it required no great leaps of faith, other than the obvious one of ... well, you know ... McCain not being routed.

Under the Constitution, a tie in the Electoral College throws the election to the House, where each state delegation gets one vote. As I understand it, a tie in the House throws the election to the Senate, and then, if the Senate also ties, McCain and Obama have to settle their differences in a Steel Cage Death Match. But I don't think that's going to ...

Oops, gotta go. New poll.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/31/pollitis.html#more

The pattern of the early voting in Oregon -- where all balloting is conducted by mail -- is clear from the opinion polls. A SurveyUSA poll from Monday had Smith's Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley up 51%-41% among the early voters, with an estimated half of the total likely votes already cast. A release this morning from Public Policy Polling (D) has Merkley up 59%-37% among early voters, with 59% of the total likely votes now cast.