Tom Toles for September 05, 2012

Empty hat losing to an empty chair, interesting.

May it be so!He and Ryan are lyin! ALL the Time.Thinking people can see that.

Which polls? Romney is ahead or tied in almost every contested state when it comes to likely voters.

Fitting, as he is an empty suit.

Sorry, dtroutma, I wasn’t plagerizing your comment.

Romney has gotten a bump in the last week or so, but Obama is still ahead by a hair, according to RCP’s averaging of the various polls. Rasmussen has consistently shown Romney ahead for weeks, while most other polls have favored Obama. More to the point, in nearly all swing states Obama is ahead. But only by a hair. This is very much a horse race and the question is whether the people prefer unpleasant truths (Obama) or pleasant fantasies (Romney).

It’s hard for the Dems to refute Romney’s plan because he doesn’t seem to have one.

www.fivethirtyeight.com shows roughly a 75% chance of a win for Obama. Nate Silver estimates between 2.5-3% bump for Romney, but notes that they have been smaller, and if the election is as polarized as it seems to be, the conventions are unlikely to get a big bump. Of course, this convention was sort of disastrous from the GOP perspective…

How else do you think Obama got elected?

Real Clear Politics averages the various polls, and for the last few days, it has been a dead heat. However, looking state-by-state, Obama is ahead in nearly all the swing states, but often by very very slim margins. The voters have a choice between unpleasant realities (Obama’s policies), and pleasant fantasies (Romney’s positions). Pleasant fantasies? Like what? Recent studies show that most Republicans believe that the poor are generally poor because they don’t try or work hard enough. This means they are not deserving of help from their harder-working fellow citizens, and therefore social programs merely take money from earners and give it to non-earners. punishing good behavior and rewarding bad behavior. Therefore cutting these programs is just as well as necessary. This sort of thinking has no support by the actual facts of the case. There are certainly freeloaders, worthy of scorn, but the actual data shows the vast majority of those partaking of these benefits are genuinely in need of them, and aren’t just being lazy. That Capitalism, unregulated and unchecked, operates in a way that is fair and equitable is another pleasant fantasy. Of course there are fantasies on both sides. One is that the number of privately-owned firearms in a society will have a large effect on the crime rate. Research indicates it is not a big factor, which is no comfort to gun worshippers any more than to gun-haters.

Romney’s SONS are more qualified to be president than Owebama. All five of them have real jobs! You know, the kind that create wealth, not redistribute other people’s.

Wow, zoid must get paid by the post. The GOP should start paying by the fact. He’d probably starve. There is not one verifiable truth in all of the posts above.

I quit participating in Polls as most are designed so that no matter how you answer, that answer is in favor of their candidate.

On Wall Street, that’s known as a “dead-cat bounce”.

How smart does one have to be to know the difference between “losing” and “loosing”?

The late great political columnist Mike Royko famously advised people to lie to pollsters, just to shake things up. I’ve never done that, though: I just hang the phone up when pollsters call me, the same as I do for calls wanting me to give money to some cause or other. (The same when ex-gf’s call me……..)

Typical bounce would be around 20%, Mitt got a 2%. He bounced like a rock.

I got a first hand view of how the “pollsters” are working when they called my husband, kept him on the phone for over an hour and in the end it probably won’t count anyway. .First off, he said he didn’t like either canidate and “if the election were today” would vote 3rd party, their repsonse was “what if there was no third party?” c’mon there’s ALWAYS more than 2 choices on the presidental ballots! At that point he said would probably not vote for either at this time, so they go through an hour of “issues.” During that time he did ask how much longer is this going to take and they basiclly said not too much longer and kept going. From my personal experience, pollster questions are never neutral, they’re usually so slanted you could use ‘em for a roof in a New England winter.So at the end of all the “issues” they ask him again who would he vote for if the election were held today and he said “neither.” As soon as that word was out of his mouth, the pollster goes “sorry, I have to go, my supervisor needs me for something” and hung up. . Now, when I took stats class, if the questioniare is not 100% compleate you can legitamatly choose not to count it and it ups your margin of error if you do include incompleates. So what do you do if the poll-ee is not giving the answers you want? Hang up. Oops, incompleate, well we’ll just have to toss it.

For those who have trouble getting off the phone; I say, “There are no registered voters in this home.” Immediate hangup.

OK ,,,, I lied.

How do you know what the questions are? Do you work for one of these polling outfits? Do you think any of these polling firms would last if they asked such stoopid questions? Only a right wing idiot believes such nonsense.

“Obama got elected by the dumb masses.”Ah, there it is! The arrogant attitude of the know it all right wing. “No one but us knows anything.” “Anyone who disagrees with us is wrong and probably a communist.” AND "The masses who our constitution give the electoral power to are “dumb”!