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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Journalism and other strange practices</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline>Common Sense</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>John Maxwell
Sunday, October 29, 2006
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<P class=StoryText align=justify>If you'd asked me two weeks ago how I thought the US midterm elections would go, I would have told you I expected the Democrats to win the House handsomely and the Senate by a small margin. The catalyst, I thought, was the sudden explosive decompression of Mr Jim Foley, the Congressman from Florida's Gold Coast whose sexual harassment of Congressional pages had just hit the fan.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=157 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>John Maxwell</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>But of course, I was reckoning without that Hippocrates of Sanctimony, President Bush's confidante, chief adviser and fondly nicknamed 'Turd Blossom' - the ineffable Karl Rove.<P class=StoryText align=justify>And of course, I am hobbled by the sad fact that, as Generalissimo Rumsfeld opined this week
"No one can predict the future with absolute certainty'.
He too is obviously reckoning without Mr Rove, who told a querulous journalist this week that he didn't expect any real change in the electoral geography of the United States anytime soon, as he, unlike the journalist, consulted 68 polls every day as against the mere dozen or so available to journalists and lesser mortals.<P class=StoryText align=justify>According to 16 of the most trusted US polls, samples taken in October put the generic Republican Party vote no higher than 41% with the generic Democratic vote no lower than 49%. In the polls, the percentage lead for the Democrats varies from nine points in the rightwing Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll to 23% in the USAToday/Gallup poll.<P class=StoryText align=justify>According to the RealClear Politics (RCP) blog, its sampling of nine of the major polls puts the average of the Republican vote at 37.3% - and the average democratic vote at 52.3% an advantage for the Democrats of 15.9%. The RCP sample discloses that President Bush's job approval rating ranges from a high of 40% in ABC and Fox polls to a low of 35% in the Newsweek poll. The average approval rating for Mr Bush in the nine majors polls is 38.4%.<P class=StoryText align=justify>One would imagine that with such substantial leads it would be impossible for the Democrats to lose, but, as the Republicans demonstrated in Ohio, two years ago, and in Florida four years before that, a determined Secretary of State can do wonders with bad numbers and rigged voting machines, with a little help from disfranchisement programmes and other ways of circumventing the democratic process.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=120 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>ROVE.told a querulous journalist this week that he didn't expect any real change in the electoral geography of the United States anytime soon, as he, unlike the journalist, consulted 68 polls every day as against the mere dozen or so available to journalists and lesser mortals</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Most scholars of the US system are clear that the GOP stole both the 2000 and the 2004 Presidential elections. As General Boykin famously said, it was God and not the people who put Mr Bush in the White House, rather like Maradona's claiming the hand of God that won the World Cup match for Argentina against England in 1986.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The science of opi
<SPAN class=Subheadline>Common Sense</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>John Maxwell
Sunday, October 29, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P class=StoryText align=justify>If you'd asked me two weeks ago how I thought the US midterm elections would go, I would have told you I expected the Democrats to win the House handsomely and the Senate by a small margin. The catalyst, I thought, was the sudden explosive decompression of Mr Jim Foley, the Congressman from Florida's Gold Coast whose sexual harassment of Congressional pages had just hit the fan.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=157 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>John Maxwell</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>But of course, I was reckoning without that Hippocrates of Sanctimony, President Bush's confidante, chief adviser and fondly nicknamed 'Turd Blossom' - the ineffable Karl Rove.<P class=StoryText align=justify>And of course, I am hobbled by the sad fact that, as Generalissimo Rumsfeld opined this week "No one can predict the future with absolute certainty'.
He too is obviously reckoning without Mr Rove, who told a querulous journalist this week that he didn't expect any real change in the electoral geography of the United States anytime soon, as he, unlike the journalist, consulted 68 polls every day as against the mere dozen or so available to journalists and lesser mortals.<P class=StoryText align=justify>According to 16 of the most trusted US polls, samples taken in October put the generic Republican Party vote no higher than 41% with the generic Democratic vote no lower than 49%. In the polls, the percentage lead for the Democrats varies from nine points in the rightwing Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll to 23% in the USAToday/Gallup poll.<P class=StoryText align=justify>According to the RealClear Politics (RCP) blog, its sampling of nine of the major polls puts the average of the Republican vote at 37.3% - and the average democratic vote at 52.3% an advantage for the Democrats of 15.9%. The RCP sample discloses that President Bush's job approval rating ranges from a high of 40% in ABC and Fox polls to a low of 35% in the Newsweek poll. The average approval rating for Mr Bush in the nine majors polls is 38.4%.<P class=StoryText align=justify>One would imagine that with such substantial leads it would be impossible for the Democrats to lose, but, as the Republicans demonstrated in Ohio, two years ago, and in Florida four years before that, a determined Secretary of State can do wonders with bad numbers and rigged voting machines, with a little help from disfranchisement programmes and other ways of circumventing the democratic process.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=120 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>ROVE.told a querulous journalist this week that he didn't expect any real change in the electoral geography of the United States anytime soon, as he, unlike the journalist, consulted 68 polls every day as against the mere dozen or so available to journalists and lesser mortals</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Most scholars of the US system are clear that the GOP stole both the 2000 and the 2004 Presidential elections. As General Boykin famously said, it was God and not the people who put Mr Bush in the White House, rather like Maradona's claiming the hand of God that won the World Cup match for Argentina against England in 1986.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The science of opi