Sarah Palin's Voting Record. Her record form the Anchorage Daily News shows she won't compromise the rights of all in favor of her personal beliefs.
And just in case you missed it, this is one of the greatest skits in Saturday Night Live History. It's worth another mid-week viewing, so go on, click play. You know you want to:
TAKE AN ISSUES QUIZ
Few of us are single-issue voters. Take the following issues quiz to see who is aligned best with the issues you care about.
Your Issue Profile: 36% Obama, 64% McCain |
 When it gets down to it, you tend to best match John McCain. But he's not the perfect candidate for you, and you may not be sold on him yet. Obama shares a good number of your views too, so you might want to give him a second look. It all comes down to which issues matter to you the most. |
Thanks for reading.
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4 comments:
As a former political consultant (and now freelancer, part time), one of my specialties was polls and crunching numbers from them. Occasionally when time permits, I'll even take one to see how influential the polls questions can be on the outcome. Some people may try to say that I "just didn't know myself", etc. But I can assure them, since I'm an party hardliner, it is the wording of the poll that causes the results to skew, not any fence straddling by me.
The first thing that pops out and I hate about polls, is there is no slider for how important you think a question is. A great poll or questionnaire like at Belief-O-meter, gives you the option to select importance. The questions used in polls behind the scenes actually do this.
An example would be three questions- one on abortion, one on the war, and one on the economy. While I am very anti abortion, if I can get a leader who will turn around our economy and not get us into unnecessary wars and actually win the necessary ones (like Afghanistan that we've lost), then I'd be willing to put abortion as a low priority, the other two high. Yet that would make me look pro choice because of my selection in candidates. But I'm not pro choice- I'm pro life- but a soldiers life, and an Iraqi baby's life, mean as much to me as an American fetus' life.
A couple of questions that caught my eye that I would include in a poll myself if I was running it, and will be doing starting next week for a local election here-
1) What should we do in Iraq. First, there is no definition of what the administration calls "stable" or a "win". What McBush might consider stable, I might not consider stable. And no one is going to simply put a dot next to "pull out as soon as possible" without quantifying it. This leans way to the right.
10) Do you support offshore drilling. This is waaaaaay more complicated than a yes/no question. Many people support offshore drilling, but only after the oil companies use the THOUSANDS of oil reserves they are already sitting on. So most people who are educated on the issue will say "no", but only with "not right now" because one day when the others run dry we might have no choice. But saying "yes" seems you support it this very moment. This question leans either way, really. Like for me, I say yes, but I mean it in 1,000 or so years, not now.
#23- Do you think our prospects are good for negotiating with Iran? Right now, any reasonable person will say "no", because America looks like a bunch of village idiots and has completely blown our standing in the world. So this leans way to the McRumsfield side of the fence. Iran is absolutely laughing and toying with us, as is Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, just to name a few. So no they will not negotiate. We are a joke, and in-debt to our ears to China joke.
Yet, if we hadn't of stormed into Iraq like fools, and Iran thought that what we did to Saddam might happen to them, then they would be MUCH easier to negotiate with. But they know we don't have the money to do squat to them (the same reason we gave Afghanistan back to the Taliban).
So most people will say NO to this question- so it will say we are for McRove. Yet it is their policies which force a no on this question, and a good administration can turn it into a yes.
(Do I need to include my disclosure that I'm a die hard yellow dog Democrat?)
Tony, thanks for your comment and participating in the discussion. Your input brings a lot of value to the table. When polls are taken, it's all in how the questions are designed. The wording of the questions, and how those questions are interpreted by the respondees are as important as any other factor. Polls are snapshots, not necessarily a reflection of reality.
You're welcome, and thanks for having such an interesting blog to visit.
I will add this to my post above- Bill Clinton's staff, especially Carville, were the masters of directing polls.
While I definitely don't hide which way I lean, I didn't want my post to seem to insinuate that republicans were the only ones who can manipulate the findings.
Heya Matt- I was going to post pretty much the same thing as Tony. I could tell which way I was going to go way before the end. According to the lesser of two evils questions, I'm 73% McCain 28% Obama. Now, if Barr or Paul was added in, I'd be closer to 99% on one of them...
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