If you were a bookie... Polls and bets on the 2004 elections

Oh my god, I agree with almost everything you just said, Bill.

I may have to commit Hari-Kerry now!

No worries Kicky. Sometimes I make sense. Now open a window and bellow out to the world, in your largest, deepest voice; GO PACKERS!

Thats not a poll. Its a stock market. You buy stocks Bush-will-win or stocks Kerry-will-win - its like betting. The graph shows daily reports, so it shows how something made IEM'ers suddenly sell their Bush stocks in unexpected numbers on the 31st, yesterday. Weird.

Ah. Figured I was missing something.

People are actually gambling somewhere seriously on this? And not in London?

That makes as much sense as daytrading the stock market.

No wonder it makes no sense to me.

Yeah, right.

If the Packers are going to do it again, they better do it quick.

How many years can Brett Favre have left?

Incidentally, Brett Favre was selected on the second round one slot ahead of when the NY Jets selected.

They were all set to take Favre. But the Falcons grabbed him, and later traded him to the Packers.

"That's okay," the Jets said at the time. "We took Browning Nagle. We like him just as much."

Sheesh.

Bill:

I think the Swift boat thing will die down. There are irregularities in the sailors' stories. Plus, after all the hoopla about whether Kerry was here or there, one fact has to emerge over time-Kerry was over there, and getting medals, and saving lives.

Bush was over here. That's going to sink in to people, even those who are listening to the Swift boat people now.

I think it is a one week maximum impact story, and a slow fade away.

Just took a look at the latest polls.

I don't think I've seen anything so close in my life.Several have it dead even, a couple have a few points for one, or the other.

Earlier I expressed my opinion that I didn't think we could have another situation where one candidate carries the popular vote, and another gets the Electoral College vote.

I retract my opinion. It truly seems possible, even at this early date, that we might have yet another race where the popular vote margin is less than 1%, and we could have one man win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College. Again.

Know what would be funny? If the Democrats lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.

Then both sides can argue the exact opposite position they have been arguing for the last four years.

i dunno...

at the same time i fear bush might win, i get a feeling that after the big glow of uber-patriotic back slapping, people are going to go home and realize that " crap! my check isn't so big as my last job". or if it is,"crap, my insurance, gas, electric,milk, beer and even da freakin' cable have gone up". "i'd ask for the raise i ain't got in three years, but the layoffs are so tuff i'm afraid to say anything". "gee...i'm glad that their building schools in baghdad, but crap, now the note from the teacher says i gotta cough up 15 bucks for extra supplies for the month".

"and what about osama?" "we never seem to hear nuttin' 'bout him nomore". "stella! did they ever find those weapons of mass distraction??". "faith based prisons??", "what's that about?? get religion on your own dime, jailbird!"

the list goes on...

and then it dawns on the poor slob...

"these guys ain't doin' such a good job. if i lazy assed it around like that and left early every thursday to take a long weekends in between vacations, i'd get fired".

suddenly, giving somebody else a chance doesn't look so bad. and "hey, at least the new guy ain't a draft dodger".

by the way...

nimh thanks for your usual attention to the hard work.

Got the stopper.

I've used it four or five times now because I couldn't believe it worked the first time. Right in the middle of one of those yadda-yadda-Kerry-yadda-yadda-Bush-yadda-yadda conversations I say "Okay, go ahead. Vote'm in again. Go ahead, then I'll know who to blame."

Their eyes get as big as George's when he's asked if he's ever made a mistake.

It's as if they just realized that they are to blame for where we are now, and they are going to be the ones to blame if these Weapons of Mass Obfuscation are put in office for another four years.

They freeze, they stammer, they look around to see if the tv changer is within reach so they can turn FoxNews on. They are on their own and without someone whispering in their ears that someone ELSE is to blame, they don't know what to say.

But I do.

Go ahead, vote them back in. And when it gets really bad, remember, George Bush and what he's done to this country is your fault.

Joe

American Research Group poll out, done Aug 30 - Sep 1.

Among likely voters, Bush now leads Kerry 48% to 47%.

When Nader's included, Bush and Kerry are tied at 47% with Nader at 3%.

Among registered voters, Kerry still leads 48% to 46%. Thats almost no change compared to August, when his lead was 49/46.

When Ralph Nader is added, it's 46% for Kerry, 45% for Bush, and 3% for Nader. Thats a three-point drop for Kerry, cause last month it was 49/45/2.

Bush draws 8% of Democrats, Kerry 9% of Republicans. Kerry gets the independents (among all registered voters) by a 5-point margin (49/44). Thats down from a 10-point margin earlier in August tho. And when Nader is included, Kerry's lead over Bush among Independents shrinks to 3% (46/43/4) - down from 13% in August.

Confused? Here's the tables.

The National Annenberg Election Survey polled a whopping 5,146 registered voters (compared to about 1,000 for yer regular poll).

Conclusion: "Bush Erases Kerry's Post-Convention Gains on Optimism, Inspiration and Values"


It does note that:


But for now,


I still have to read on about the details. Because of the huge number of respondents, just their sample of "persuadables" alone has the margin of error of a regular national poll.

So all the complaining from the left about how bad it is now is just a primer?

If you ever need to, you can blame me. Especially when things just keep getting better.

BUSH TRIED TO INSTALL CRONY AT FLORIDA ELECTION BOARD

President Bush has said "Every registered voter deserves to have confidence
that the system is fair and elections are honest."[1] But according to a new
report, the President is doing all he can to once again rig the election in
Florida.

According to the Miami Daily Business Review, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R)
appointee at the Broward County Board of Elections hired a law firm headed
by two close cronies of President Bush to fight any charges against it
during the 2004 election. Specifically, the Broward Supervisor of Elections
Brenda Snipes hired the law firm Blosser & Sayfie.[2] Justin Sayfie "is a
former spokesman for Gov. Bush and currently is co-chair of the Bush/Cheney
re-election campaign in Broward County." He is also a Bush Ranger (aka.
someone who has raised more than $100,000 for the President's campaign).[3]
James Blosser is also "a top fund-raiser for President Bush's re-election
campaign."[4] Many observers expect the election will be extremely close in
Florida and predict it will touch off litigation. County election
supervisors and their legal teams could play a key role in deciding the
election.

While Snipes has since been forced to fire the law firm,[5] it shows just
how far the Bushes are willing to go to throw the Florida election again.
Earlier this summer, Jeb Bush attempted to purge thousands of voters from
the Florida voting rolls, but was stopped after public pressure overwhelmed
the effort.[6] Additionally, Florida GOP operatives are going to
naturalization offices to give new immigrants voter registration forms which
are already pre-marked to register the voter as a Republican.[7]


Sources:

1. "President Signs Historic Election Reform Legislation into Law,"
WhiteHouse.gov, 10/29/02,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=53257.
2. "Elections Supervisor Rapped for Hiring Lawyers With Bush Ties," Law.com,
8/30/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=53258.
3. "Top Fundraisers Earn Right to Party," Los Angeles Times, 8/31/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=53259.
4. "Elections Supervisor Rapped for Hiring Lawyers With Bush Ties," Law.com,
8/30/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=53258.
5. "Broward elections supervisor fires lawyer over firm's connection to
President Bush," Sun-Sentinel, 8/28/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=53260.
6. "State ceases felon voting purge," Miami Herald, 8/14/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=53261.
7. National Public Radio, 7/25/04.

Especially when things just keep getting better.

In what bizarro world are they getting better? The American economy continues to stagger along (more folks in poverty than four years ago, more people without insurance, median income is flat), the Bush prescription drug plan has turned out to be a massive complicated mess and three times as expensive as the administration said it would be (a Republican friend of mine said if he didn't know better he's think it was designed by Hillary Clinton), the country, which ought to be united by a uniter not a divider, is more split apart than it has been since the Civil War over issues like healthcare and taxes, the security of our infrastructure and federal mandates for education.

The war on terror, excuse me, The War On Terror has been diverted by the biggest goof-up in history, I'm talking about the intelligence services, not the President though, he comes in a close second.
Not only were they wrong about the WMD, Cheney's own super-duper second guessers came to the same conclusions (one would have thought if they were really any good they would have found and reported something different from the CIA/NSA/DoD, but no, they actually found better evidence that also turned out to be wrong.

So what? says the White House and it's supporters, everybody believed there were WMDs. The so-what is it was still a mistake and now we not only have to fix the mistake (First estimates were two years, then five years, now, no end in sight.) AND actually combat and defeat the terrorists. And here's the real news, fighting terrorism is not done with tanks and helicopters, but Bush and his advisors seem to think so. And if they don't wise up or get wised up, things will most certainly not go better. (If there is a second term, they will have to call Colin Powell at home to get his input, he's quitting this bunch of incompetents. Oh, and yeah, the head of Homeland Security is getting outta Dodge too.) And they might ask the intelligence services, of which I was once a proud member, to get it right or shut up.

Don't think the Republicans are incompetent? Okay, one more example then I gotta go.
A major plank of the conservative political philosophy is that smaller government is better, right? So, in the three years that control of both Houses of Congress lay in the hands of the Republicans, how much reduction of the size of government occurred? Think now, how many departments were eliminated, how much fat was trimmed from the staffs of all those Washingtonian bureaucrats, how much slimmer is government now under Coachs Bush and Cheney? You tell me, I know. You do to. (Maybe they didn't want to fire anyone and make the job numbers even worse??)

They just talk a good game, they haven't a clue what the effects of their gasbagging are, but they just keep on and they think that is what's meant by the word : steadfast.

But as I said, you think they are great, so go ahead, let them run things for another four years. We might last though it, maybe not, but we might.

Joe

Bush Leads Kerry by 11 Points in Time Magazine Poll
Bush got 52 percent support over 41 percent for Kerry among 926 likely voters surveyed nationwide in an Aug. 31-Sept. 2 telephone poll. The margin of error is 4 percentage points. Independent candidate Ralph Nader got 3 percent in the poll, which will be published in Time magazine's Sept. 6 issue.

Gee, the Dems said there just wasn't a bounce to get.

Brand - the dems have said a lot of things....I'm taking notes LOL.