I’m fucking sick of these “dead heat” polls. In fact I’m sick of polling in general. I’ll wager that the majority of these undecided asshats are unable to hop on a bandwagon because of these polls. These damn things are molding the elections.
Speaking of which, once they do the exit polling for the “early voting”, we’ll have more polls molding more people.
My proposed fixes to this stupid election system of our would be the following.
Party primaries on the same damn day
Electoral votes are split up, instead of getting the whole state
NO FUCKING EXIT POLLING ALLOWED. Actually no polling of any kind whatsoever.
No early voting.
No exit polling at all? What on earth would Dan Rather or Peter Jennings talk about for 18 hours straight on election day? I like exit polls, personally. It either lets me relax, or scares the high holy fuck out of me, depending on the results.
I do think the split electoral college vote is a good idea though. The Electoral college has “Jumped the Shark”.
I also like exit polling myself. One thing to remember about the current polls, though - they (generally) only poll people who have a land line. there’s a significant # of folks who have cell phones only.
I don’t know anyone who is an “undecided”. Thankfully. I mean at this stage if you don’t know who you’re going to vote for, just stay the fuck home. If any of my family or friends were fence-sitting, I’d be pissed. I can even respect some moron who wants to vote for Bush, but I cannot respect someone who doesn’t know who they’re voting for.
That having been said, I don’t know anyone who waits at home to see how the vote is going to make a decision. Does a person like this exist? It’s almost an unfathomable idea to me. So I can’t say whether the exit polls do any good. I don’t think they do, but that’s based on my assuming everyone has at least SOME fucking opinion on the candidates.
In 1980, the networks called the election for Reagan before the polls has closed on the West Coast. The result was that lots of Democrats didn’t bother to vote which supposedly screwed the candidates for local office.
Also, it’s in the best interest for some states to keep things the was they are. For example, Florida has 27 electors. Winner takes all. The candidates are doing all that they can for FL to win them all. Would they be doing so much sucking up there if it only meant the difference between getting 13 vs 24 electors as they are when it is 0 or 27?
They wouldn’t be doing as much sucking up, but it might be spread out more equally among states. I think it’s crazy how certain states don’t barely even exist to these guys.
On a strict proportion scale? If you do that, then there’s no need for any campaigning in anything but New York and California, because no vote swing in any medium or small state will change any electoral votes.
By district? Then you’re just changing which locales get the attention, not that some locales are receiving more attention than others.
Do away with the Electoral College and go to a simple popular vote system? Great. Now imagine the next time an election is decided by less than 1% (which may happen this year, and has certainly happened in previous elections). Imagine the Florida fiasco happening in every state of the Union at the same time.
You want to replace the EC? Fine. Tell me a system that actually works better.
I’ve favored the district based system for a long time (20 years maybe…Oy!). And toss in the two electors representing the Senators for the overall winner of the state tally. I think that would lead to a proper concentration.
That’s one of the reasons that damn red and blue map of 2000 cheesed me off so. My dad would wave it and shout about the amount of red and I’d say ‘State of Wyoming? HUGE red. District of Columbia? TINY blue. Yet DC has more people. Tell me why that damn map matters.’
I’ve heard that there’s actually something to this. A nonzero slice of the populace apparently suffers from such feeble self-esteem that they seek validation by voting for the winner, regardless of party, platform, or anything else. They thus associate themselves with the victorious side and, I guess, stave off the inky demons of personal irrelevance for another four years.
These “dead heat” polls must be driving them crazy: “Oh! Oh! Who do I vote for! I must know who is ahead so I can vote for them! I wouldn’t want to be forced to make an actual decision and come face to face with the soul-crushing pointlessness of my shriveled ego and neglected intelligence!”
I wonder if these are the same people who tremble with anticipation before the telephone-voting information is opened on each episode of American Idol.
But wait! Early voting is important to some people who flat out know there’s a good chance that their health will keep them from the polls that day. I’m in Texas and not Florida, so I realize the early voting rules may be (and quite possibly are) different, but let’s not end all early voting. Sure I know that my vote is literally meaningless (my understanding is that in Texas the electors give votes to whomever they want, regardless of popular vote, please for the love of all things cute and cuddly correct me if I’m wrong). Exit polling is incredibly dumb, in my opinion for the reasons others have mentioned. Look, go vote and if you have such a problem then being on the “winning team” lie about who you voted for, its not like you voted for your ideas or with your heart anyway.
Now let’s all go giggle at this lovely graph from the BBC that shows Nixon with an overwhelming win in 1972. Isn’t that the election that many people say they didn’t vote for him? I grew up hearing a lot of “I never voted for Nixon!”, or have those darn electors caused trouble again? Hmm he got over 47 million votes, looks like some people are fibleting.
(Click on the past elections tab above the map and the ’72 mark under the map for the almost completely red map of which I speak.)
I like early voting. No mad dash on election day, no long lines or screw ups with your registration. I voted Saturday. Here is a site to show you how many people have voted in early voting so far in Clark County (the greater Las Vegas area).
Four years ago, about 50% of the total votes cast in the Presidential election were cast in early voting.
As far as the polls - they seem to be biased, and sometimes simply based on inaccurate information. It is not only election polls that are sometime way off whack. Nielsen ratings often give a skewered result with television ratings - how else can you explain “Life With Jim”.
I agree, however, than the clueless undecideds, for lack of a brain cell, do tend to vote for the candidate they perceive to be leading in the polls.
We have early voting here in TN, and my wife and I went this past Saturday, taking our three year-old on her first voting expedition. She got to press the green button submitting my votes, which was quite the big deal, let me tell you!
