Out On A Limb

I can watch Mary Katherine Ham all freakin day:

We’re on the home stretch people….no letting up.

I know I haven’t blogged much on what my thoughts are in this election but if you look back over my posts in the past year you will see that I have predicted the Republicans keep both houses. That still remains my prediction.

These biased polls tell us nothing frankly. This has been proven time and time again and after every election over the 6 years the Dem’s have been so confident, so arrogant. All because of these overly biased polls. Post election they cry and whine “what happened!”

This election will be no different.

And I am in some good company:

So what’s it all mean? In the tied races, the Republican will win. In the close races, the Republican will win. It adds up to Republicans running the table in the Senate. That’s right – running the table. Montana, Virginia, Missouri, Tennessee, New Jersey, Rhode Island (whoopee), and Maryland will all send or re-send Republicans to the Senate. But wait, there’s more! Michigan will send Sheriff Michael Bouchard to the Senate. And in Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum is in striking distance.

In the House, the same holds true. Republican Joe Negron will take Foley’s seat. New Mexico’s Heather Wilson will return to Congress. So, too, will Connecticut’s Chris Shays. We’ll lose a handful of seats for the individual failures of certain Congressmen (hello, Curt Weldon), but we will retain control of the House.

Okay, I’m officially out on the limb. But I’m comfortable here. The paradigm has shifted. People like Stu Rothenberg are like old generals re-fighting the last war; they’re re-analyzing the last election without realizing that certain key facts on the ground have changed.

Guess I am out on a limb also, but sometimes that’s the best place to be.

UPDATE

Here is just one more reason why this election is SO important:

For weeks, commentators have speculated that significant numbers of conservatives, alienated by over-spending, the Iraq War, and other perceived GOP disappointments, will stay home on Election Day, giving one or both Houses of Congress to Democrats. But for those who care about reforming the Supreme Court, sitting this one out may soon look like a mistake of historic proportions.

For the past several weeks, there has been a rumor circulating among high-level officials in Washington, D.C., that a member of the U.S. Supreme Court has received grave medical news and will announce his or her retirement by year’s end. While such rumors are not unusual in the nation’s capital, this one comes from credible sources. Additionally, a less credible but still noteworthy post last week at the liberal Democratic Underground blog says, “Send your good vibes to Justice Stevens. I just got off the phone with a friend of his family and right now he is very ill and at 86 years old that is not good.”

Normally, this news might be too ghoulish to repeat publicly. Nevertheless, with the election just days away, it is news that should be considered. It points out what could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the 20-year movement to recast the court with a constitutionalist majority. It would be a cruel twist indeed for conservatives to “teach Republicans a lesson” next Tuesday, only to be taught a lesson themselves within months when new Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) leads a Democratic majority against the most important Supreme Court nominee in decades. Conservatives whose mantra is “no more Souters” should bear in mind Robert Bork’s fate after the Senate changed from Republican to Democratic hands in 1986.

[...]This week in Indiana, Montana, and Nevada, President Bush raised judges as a key reason to elect Republicans to the Senate. By all accounts, it has been and continues to be a favorite applause line among Republican crowds. Judicial confirmations were key to tight Senate races in 2002 and 2004. Conservatives should not forget the issue this Election Day, when the victory of a generation may be at last within their grasp.

To finally have a conservative majority in the court would be HUGE! I’ve never seen it in my lifetime but hopefully I will in the coming months.

UPDATE II

This is why these polls can’t be trusted:

Here is an item published by Roll Call on Wednesday that we almost missed about two Zogby polls in New York’s 25th District that two media outlets refused to run:

The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse and WSYR-TV had asked Zogby to conduct a second poll of the race after the pollster acknowledged that his firm had improperly weighted the results of a survey last week. In that case, Zogby polled the 25th district but then weighted the data using voter registration information from the more-Republican 24th district.

Zogby promised the two media outlets that he would do a new poll from scratch, but when the results of that survey came in both declined to run them. Jim Tortora, the news director of WSYR-TV, wrote on the station’s Web site that after consulting with outside polling experts, he was concerned that Zogby had conducted the second poll using the same larger sample of 5,000 likely voters as he had on the first survey.

“With respect to Mr. Zogby, we felt the questions raised … left us with only one choice: We had to pull the poll,” Tortora wrote.

Used the same sample? Here is the explanation from WSYR’s Tortora about their analysis of the second poll:

This time, the Post Standard arranged an independent expert from the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy to review the findings of the second Zogby poll. Late Tuesday, we discovered that some of the same people who were called for the first poll, were called again. Zogby confirmed they did indeed use the same larger sample of 5000 likely voters, to come up with this “new” poll sample of 502 likely voters. Our independent expert felt this raised a red flag…an unknown variable. The concern? How would you react if you were called twice in about a week, to answer the same questions? Would you answer differently? The same? Would you even take the call?

[...]“I think it’s sort of a rookie mistake if you’re including people a second time from a database,” said Cliff Zukin, past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, an industry group based in Lenexa, Kan.

Zukin, a professor of public policy and political science at Rutgers University, spoke before he was told who conducted the poll.

He said it’s considered a bad practice to call the same people twice for “random” polls.

“The problem is the first interview activates them,” Zukin said. “They follow the news differently. So the people become different from a random citizen.

These pollsters now how to get the results they wont. That’s it in a nutshell. They either put in loaded questions or poll people twice and so on.

And the Democrats are always surprised when the election doesn’t go their way.