Some Polling Indices Of Which You May Be Unfamiliar

bu C. Edmund Wright - November 25th, 2009 - American Thinker

The Empty Tent index is constructed to demonstrate the massive vote loss the McCain Campaign and other “big tent” Republicans suffered thanks to the strategy to “reach across the aisle” and not go after McCain’s “honorable opponent” and so on. We could call this the “Colin Powell Impact Index” or the “David Brooks Crease in the Pants” index, but we will stick with “Empty Tent” index for short.

This index is constructed by contrasting how the McCain Campaign performed with independents in the 2008 election – they lost them by 21 points – with how independents now view Obama since they have an understanding of who he is. According to Rasmussen today, 51% of independents strongly disapprove of Obama while only 16% strongly approve, giving Obama an index of -35% among this group of voters.

Since McCain refused to clearly define “who Obama was” during the campaign in an attempt to attract moderates, the spread of 56 percentage points is a pretty good snapshot of how many votes the “maverick” left on the table.

I am not fond of polls. Much of the problem stems from the fact that it is very hard to determine whether the polls have valid data or have scammed the results by careful selection of who is polled and how the questions are asked. However there are some very interesting ideas included in this assessment of recent polls.

John McCain did many things right in his campaign, and many things wrong. The excerpt above is one issue that I had long been frustrated with. McCain refused to point out how radical, extreme and out of the American mainstream Barack Obama was (and is). The polling suggests that McCain lost 56% of the independent voters he wanted to support him for failing to accurately define Obama.

The second issue that McCain messed up seriously was his support for the Wall Street bailout. Republican candidates really need to decide once and for all time, we are the party of freedom and free enterprise. There is NEVER a justification to fatten the wallets of Wall Street investors from the taxes of average Americans. I still cannot fathom why McCain... and a lot of other Republicans... did not understand that. Actually, from some of their comments, some of them still do not get that.

Finally, I am still flabbergasted at the black community and their rejection of McCain. As a moderate he should have gotten more black support than any Republican candidate ever received. He didn't. Barack Obama is, for reasons of his hatred of America and his extremist socialist agenda, absolutely toxic to those who oppose him. He is the most divisive and most despised Democrat in the last 100 years. His arrogance and disdain for our values grates on people. Yet well over 90% of blacks support him enthusiastically. Blacks cannot accept that the hatred for Obama has nothing to do with his race. Before he has left office, that hate will have transferred itself to the black community because they keep attacking those who oppose him with the racist label. The label is not sticking. The backlash will. Barack Obama is going to wind up being the worst thing for the black community that could ever have happened.