The fascinating Carville poll
The first thing we want to say about the Democracy Corps poll is that it looks fairer to us than most polls we have analyzed. We haven’t compared every jot and tittle, but we have looked at things like the balance of Democrat and Republicans, the 2004 voting preferences of those interviewed (48/46 Bush), liberal versus conservative, and other matters. We specifically looked at internals such as church attendance, and found them to be quite similar to the exit poll results (we have also been critical of the exit polls, but that is another matter). The integrity of the poll’s internals compares very favorably with the tripe put out by CBS / New York Times, and others, which often appear to skew the demographics to produce results consistent with the pre-chosen stories.
The poll says that Americans are not happy about the war in Iraq (56% say not worth the cost), and are displeased with the economy (60%), with 48% strongly feeling that way. The poll also says that Republicans rank better on security and defense than Democrats, one of the several reasons that the Democrats have gained no ground, but rather have lost popularity as they have increased their attacks on the US military and the war. Here is one of the charts illustrating the point:
Note the cliff that the Democratic Party has fallen off since the November election. It looks to us like the relentless negativity and obstructionism of congressional Democrats has lowered the party’s positives and increased its negatives, for a net negative swing of 11 points since election 2004. Gee, maybe some of the negative sentiments of the electorate about the war and the economy come from the relentless negativity of elected Democrats and their media allies.
But the most unusual aspect of the poll is one we have seen time and again from polling organizations, and we can’t make hide nor hair of it.
In every single poll, including the one conducted moments before actual balloting in November 2004, Republicans lose control of Congress. The Democrats are always ahead, according to what people say, always, always, always. But they always lose. What on earth is going on?
It is tautological that actual Republican voters are underpolled in this and almost every major poll, since the respondents consistently state a preference for a Democratic congress, and consistently elect a Republican one. That is one systematic error that probably could be corrected by changing the number of “strong Republicans” (24% out of 36% total), or by some other appropriate means to reflect reality. As we have previously noted, 81% of Bush supporters were highly enthusiatic voters, versus the two thirds figure that the Carville poll uses.
The other element that the polls do not measure is Democrat vote fraud, endemic in urban strongholds, as we have discussed. The best method of dealing with this, in our opinion, is not polling at prisons, morgues, graveyards or pet cemetaries.
Conclusion
We think the Carville poll shows pretty clearly that Democrats are corkscrewing themselves into an even deeper hole by their relentless defeatism, negativity, bashing of the military, and obstructionism. We frankly don’t understand the negative views of the economy, since a GDP growth rate of 3.8% and unemployment rate of 5.1% or so are about as good as it gets. We further think that a couple of the biggest questions in the country were not even addressed by the poll. We would have been interested to get results on whether people believe, for example, that each party is strong in its support of American family values, our military, and people of faith. Those might have been some interesting and important results.