A Nation of Polls and Predictions
By Prof. Walt Brasch
A Nation of Polls and Predictions
By Prof. Walt Brasch
Special to USAfricaonline.com
USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
NigeriaCentral.com
The Black Business
Journal
The U.S. national TV networks, with the print media drooling in their
shadows, began "predicting" the presidential winner in each state
nanoseconds after the November 2000 polls closed. They based their
pretend-scientific analyses upon exit polls, directed by consulting
companies populated by statisticians, mathematicians, and
academicians of all types. They could just as well have hired a bevy
of bright beauticians for all the accuracy we saw in Florida.
As we now know from the media, all the exit polls from Florida
were right. George W. Bush won. And Al Gore won. And nobody won. And
somebody else won. And right-wing conservative Pat Buchanan scored
big in liber
al
Democrat Palm Beach. And Ralph Nader was somewhere protecting palm
trees.
The results of the Florida election, which by chance circumstance will determine the next president, is rife with charges of fraud, incompetence, and stupidity. Ballots were improperly prepared in one heavily-Democratic county, ballot boxes were "lost" or unsecured elsewhere, and more than 19,000 votes are in dispute, more than enough to decide who wins the Florida popular vote, the state's 25 electoral votes, and the presidency. Even Pat Buchanan acknowledged not only the "ineptitude" in ballot design, but seriously doubted he could have received 3,400 votes in the liberal Jewish precincts.
Thousands have taken to street demonstrations to protest what they believe is an election stolen from Vice-President Al Gore in a state under the control of Gov. "Jeb" Bush, brother of Gov. George W. Bush, who during the campaign declared he would do whatever it took to give Florida to the Republicans.
The vice-president, who won the nation's popular vote but may lose the election in the Electoral College depending upon what happens in Florida, has told the people he trusts the Constitution, and stands behind whatever path it leads. His opponent, as arrogant and smirky as he was during the campaign, has already begun acting as if the state and election are his, celebrating and "leaking" names of his cabinet and key aides.
With the possibility of losing the election, Bush has declared that Gore's challenge is just "politics." Of course it's politics. What part of the election process does Bush believe isn't politics? Bush, of course, is the same candidate who spent millions in TV ads declaring "I believe in the people," apparently as long as they agree with him.
Florida is also the state where election fraud is just another way to enjoy a balmy November day. The 1999 Pulitzer Prize in investigative journalism went to the Miami Herald news staff for numerous stories that pointed to massive voter fraud that eventually led the courts to overturn the election of the Miami mayor.
The problems in Florida aren't unlike the problems in Illinois in 1960. The Republicans, united behind Richard Nixon, saw possible voter fraud in Democrat Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago, which has traditionally allowed dead people to vote, and the ward healers to recruit the homeless to earn a few extra bucks by voting early and often. It was Illinois that guaranteed
John F. Kennedy the election in one of the slimmest vote margins in history, gave us Camelot, and postponed Watergate about 14 years.
But, the problems in the 2000 election, and especially in Florida, have been magnified by the news media's insatiable rush to judgment, their inner need to be first with the news, even if it's inaccurate. To pretend they know what's happening, they base everything upon polls, not unlike how the politicians decide who's worth the time to schmooze and booze.
Reporters who voted in only their second general electionnow write detailed analyses and predictions of upcoming elections, based upon "scientific polling procedures." Polls dominate news coverage, and politicians read them as religiously as churches have bingo games, afraid to make decisions without being told what to think. The news is no longer what the candidates are doing, but what other people think of the candidates and the candidates' reactions to the polls. Naturally, our follow-the-sheep nation supports those ahead in the polls. In a convoluted Mobius strip of logic, the media then devote more of their news coverage to people who are ahead in the polls. Unless you're billionaires Ross Perot and Steve Forbes, if you have a brilliant and workable plan for the future of America but are a "third party" candidate or an independent, you get minimal coverage. After all, the polls proved you don't have a chance of winning, so why should the media waste time and space?
Newspaper editors with nothing better to do with their lives send out a reporter and photographer to do "Person on the Street" interviews. The question of the day to a half dozen people who can't even name their own Congressman is, "Do you agree with the President's handling of the nuclear test ban treaty?" As any sophomore math major knows, these polls are unscientific and useless. But, circulation increases another dozen or so that day as polled relatives buy an extra copy of the paper.
Routine TV polls are even more insidious. For a buck--split between the phone company and the station--you call a 900 number during the 6 o'clock newscast, answer a yes/no question, and hear the results at 11. However, we don't know how many fools wasted a buck, if most of them were rich dowagers with the time and money to call in a dozen times, friends or enemies of a particular candidate or issue, or 13-year-old pubescents who thought by calling the 900 number they'd hear a TV anchor talk dirty to them.
Maybe, it's time the rest of us talk dirty to the some of the media.
Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, is a national award-winning journalist, who has covered politics for more than 30 years.
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Yoruba Forum blasts Obasanjo as puppet of "Hausa-Fulani sponsors" for arresting OPC's leader, others. Obasanjo is Yoruba. He did not win significant number of votes across Yorubaland, including his local precinct in Ogun State but secured heavy support in North, South and Eastern sections of Nigeria. |
AFRICA
AND THE U.S. ELECTIONS