CNN gets called out over faulty Polling

So CNN thought it would be cute to post a poll, showing Trump ahead. It was too good to be true and MSNBC, found the flaw in their poll.

Here's more info:

First and foremost, the CNN survey included a +4 Republican sample, when the electorate in the most recent presidential election was +7 Democratic. According to Huffington Post’s Pollster, the Democrats continue to have an edge of seven points when it comes to party identification.

Add the fact that no election since 1980 has had an electorate with more Republicans than Democrats, and the CNN poll quickly seems like an outlier.

NBC News noticed these flaws and adjusted the CNN survey using 2012’s electorate – which is likely to resemble 2016 – and it gave Clinton a four-point edge over Trump, which is much more in line with other polling.

Nice try CNN

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New Poll: Americans Trust Hillary Clinton over the issue of Benghazi

As the GOP continue drive this Benghazi mess to the ground, they might want to pay attention to the public. According to the latest PPP's poll, the public trust Hillary Clinton and her judgement:

PPP's newest national poll finds that Republicans aren't getting much traction with their focus on Benghazi over the last week. Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and Clinton's +8 net favorability rating at 52/44 is identical to what it was on our last national poll in late March. Meanwhile Congressional Republicans remain very unpopular with a 36/57 favorability rating.

Voters think Congress should be more focused on other major issues right now rather than Benghazi. By a 56/38 margin they say passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill is more important than continuing to focus on Benghazi, and by a 52/43 spread they think passing a bill requiring background checks for all gun sales should be a higher priority.

While voters overall may think Congress' focus should be elsewhere there's no doubt about how mad Republicans are about Benghazi. 41% say they consider this to be the biggest political scandal in American history to only 43% who disagree with that sentiment. Only 10% of Democrats and 20% of independents share that feeling. Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate, by a 74/12 margin that it's worse than Teapot Dome, and by a 70/20 margin that it's worse than Iran Contra.

One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don't actually know where it is. 10% think it's in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.

Well, I wonder how long they will keep this up. Nothing new is coming up and the story is getting tired. Time to focus on jobs, GOP.

Polls According to Nate Silver

When it comes to polls, I only trust Nate Silver. His styling and smarts are usually on point and correct.

Today he gives us this figure

Nate says the Pew Poll gave Romney a rise but now that's in question:

There are two smarter questions to ask about the Pew poll. First, is it really likely that Mr. Romney leads the race by 4 points right now? The consensus of the evidence, particularly the national tracking polls, would suggest otherwise. Instead, the forecast model’s conclusion is that the whole of the data is still consistent with a very narrow lead for Mr. Obama, albeit one that is considerably diminished since Denver.

It might be granted that the situation is more ambiguous than usual right now. But our forecast model looks at literally all of the polls; it estimates Mr. Romney’s post-debate bounce as being 2.5 percentage points, not quite enough to erase Mr. Obama’s pre-debate advantage.

The other valid line of inquiry concerns the timing of the poll. The Pew poll was conducted from Thursday through Sunday, although more of the interviews were conducted in the earlier part of that period. There’s nothing in the poll that really refutes the story that Mr. Romney initially received a very large bounce after the debate (perhaps somewhere on the order of 4 or 5 points, if not quite as large as Pew shows it), which has since faded some between the news cycle turning over and the favorable jobs report on Friday.

Very interesting

Nate Silver brings a Harsh Reality to Romney

Nate Silver drops some knowledge about the recent polls and Romney's bounce. As you can see there were very little change.

Nate says that the debate helped Romney, but not in a way he probably hoped:

However, the fact that Mr. Romney did not make further gains in the polls on Sunday can be read as mildly disappointing for him. The way tracking polls work is to replace the oldest day of interviews with fresh interviews conducted the previous day. In the Sunday release of the polls, this meant that interviews from Saturday were replacing a day of interviewing from before the debate. The fact that the Saturday interviews that entered the polls were roughly as strong for Mr. Obama as the predebate day of interviews that they displaced is an encouraging sign for Mr. Obama — at least as compared with most of the polling news that he has received since the debate.

This is getting tight, folks.

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Wolf Blitzer strikes down the Bogus Polls Claim - WATCH

Is This For Real? Herman Cain is Leading in the Polls

This is surreal. He dominating this game. How?

More polls here

According to FiveThirtyEight: Gay Rights are not a High Priority in both Polticial Groups

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight took a gander at the campaign Web sites of Republican and Democratic candidates. He wanted to see what are the hot topics of the parties:

With the help of FiveThirtyEight’s news assistant, Micah Cohen, I studied the campaign Web sites of Republican and Democratic candidates for the House in the 33 Congressional districts currently labeled toss-ups by The New York Times political desk. Although a few candidates did not highlight particular issues on their official Web pages, and a few others remain engaged in primaries where there is no clear favorite, we were able to examine the sites for 29 Republicans and 29 Democrats who are likely to be on the ballot in November. We then examined the subjects these candidates highlighted on the “issues” sections of their sites, dividing them into roughly 30 categories.

Here's a chart of what's the top priorities of both groups:

As you can see, we are not in the top tier, but to be honest, I kind of knew that. With everything that's happening, I knew we would be somewhere around that range.

Nate said:

And both Republicans and Democrats avoided the issue of gay rights, where public opinion is shifting. Even if gay marriage were too controversial to be a part of the Democratic agenda in most swing districts, the Democrats might theoretically gain ground by highlighting their support for allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military, where large majorities of the public back their position. But perhaps hamstrung by Mr. Obama, who has taken a series of half-steps on the issue, few of these Democrats have chosen to do so.

What do you think about it?


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Gays are Still Feeling Obama

And I thought it was just me...

A national survey conducted online shows that 67% of LGBT adults say that the country is going in the right direction, compared to 45% of straight adults. The poll shows an 11-point increase in approval among LGBT respondents from June to August.

LGBT respondents also appeared more confident about their personal financial outlook, with 57% saying they expect the economy to improve in the next year; among heterosexual adults, 45% shared that expectation.

The survey also found that 69% of gays rate President Barack Obama's overall handling of the economy as excellent or pretty good. Only 38% of heterosexual adults agree with their assessment. Further, more than four out of five LGBT adults trust the president to do what is right going forward for the American economy, compared to 60% of straight adults.

That's cute. Now, I wonder what the results would be if the survey talked about Obama's stance on LGBT rights. I bet that would be interesting to see.

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The South needs to be under an Educational State of Emergency

In a poll, the question was asked...
"Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?"

Well guess who said no...
Sometimes I wonder how did I get out of there unscathed

More here

Reasons why the Cali Gay Community has to reach out beyond WeHo

One of the biggest failures of the No on Prop 8 campaign was the outreach to minorities and LGBT minority groups.

And after many meetings, protests and marches Cali's gay groups pledge to do better. But if they still need any convincing, they should look in the Los Angeles Times.

They just did a poll that should give these group plenty to work with.

Here's some results

White voters were most emphatic in their support for same-sex marriage, with 68% supporting it and 27% opposing. African American voters were strongly against it, with 54% opposing same-sex marriage and 37% supporting it.

Opposition to gay marriage by African Americans was widely seen as a major factor contributing to the passage of Proposition 8. Latinos in the current poll were split, with 45% supporting same-sex marriage and 46% opposing.

Within the Latino population, there were additional divisions: women, the young and people with college educations offered more backing for gay marriage than men, older voters and those with fewer years of schooling. Since the passage of Proposition 8, political analysts have suggested that statewide support for same-sex marriage is only a matter of time, and the poll offered support for that idea.

Among Los Angeles voters, support for same-sex marriage grew consistently stronger as the age of respondents decreased.

Among those age 18-29, 66% said same-sex marriages should be recognized as valid, while 29% disagreed.

The percentage of support declined slightly with each increment of age; those age 50-64 supported gay marriage by a narrower 55%-39% margin. The only voters to oppose same-sex marriage in greater numbers than those who backed it were those older than 64. In that group, 43% supported legal gay marriages and 48% were opposed.

This should be helpful for the next campaign. They know what they need to do and marching in WeHo is not the ideal.

Time to take the message to East L.A. and South Central.

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The People have Spoken

Good stuff from the polls:

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows support for marriage equality among Americans at an all-time high. According to the poll, 49% support same-sex marriage, while 46% oppose it. This is the first time supporters of same-sex marriage have outnumbered opponents in an ABC/Post poll.

Some key findings:

The poll found pronounced differences by age, with 66% of adults under 30 supporting same-sex marriage, 48% of respondents ages 30–64 supporting it, and only 28% of those over 65 in favor.

Support among self-identified conservatives, who remain least likely to endorse marriage equality, increased threefold over five years, from 10% in 2004 to 30% in the latest poll.

Polarization remains strong according to party affiliation, with conservative Republicans opposing marriage equality most strongly, and liberal Democrats favoring it most strongly.

Among those in the middle, the poll shows that 54% of moderates and 52% of independents favor marriage equality. However, the largest single shift is evident in moderate and conservative Democrats, where 57% support same-sex marriage now compared to 30% in 2006.

Additionally, 53% of respondents said that same-sex marriages performed legally in another state should be recognized in their states.

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Race, Power, and Politics

A Yahoo poll has given me an interesting perspective on the attitudes on race. I thought I had it pegged, but I didn't. But I was close.

Here are some special pieces:

It shows that a substantial portion of white Americans still harbor negative feelings toward blacks. It shows that blacks and whites disagree tremendously on how much racial prejudice exists, whose fault it is and how much influence blacks have in politics.

More whites apply positive attributes to blacks than negative ones, and blacks are even more generous in their descriptions of whites. Racial prejudice is lower among college-educated whites living outside the South. And many whites who think most blacks are somewhat lazy, violent or boastful are willing or even eager to vote for Obama over Republican John McCain, who is white.

The poll, however, shows that blacks and whites see racial discrimination in starkly different terms. When asked "how much discrimination against blacks" exists, 10 percent of whites said "a lot" and 45 percent said "some."

Among blacks, 57 percent said "a lot" and all but a fraction of the rest said "some."

Asked how much of America's existing racial tension is created by blacks, more than one-third of white respondents said "most" or "all," and 9 percent said "not much." Only 3 percent of blacks said "most" or "all," while half said "not much at all."

Nearly three-fourths of blacks said white people have too much influence in American politics. Only 12 percent of whites agreed. Almost three times as many blacks as whites said blacks have too little influence.

Far more blacks than whites say government officials "usually pay less attention to a request or complaint from a black person than a white person."

One in five whites have felt admiration for blacks "very" or "extremely" often. Seventy percent of blacks have felt the same about whites.

What's interesting is the different views about racism. It exist, but I think most folks want to move away from that belief. But we can't until we accept it and deal with it. We all have our issues. All I ask is that we deal with it. We can't move on until we do.

Who's Bringing the Buffalo Wings?

Which candidate would you like to watch football with?

Well, Women, minorities, younger and unmarried people were likelier to prefer catching a game with Obama while men, whites, older and married people would rather watch with McCain.

Obama won by 50 percent to McCain's 47 percent, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll.

But I have two questions; Where were the gays in this poll? Some of us like football, maybe for different reasons, but we like it. And I would like to know which candidate would you ask to join you at a Horror festival, shopping, or a walk in Greenwich Village.