Today Swimming Freestyle featured a map of the data from a new Gallup poll.
Results are based on telephone interviews with 160,236 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 2 - June 30, 2009, as part of Gallup Poll Daily tracking. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point.The red/blue discrepancy is striking, but as Jay notes, "The one thing the four Republican aligned states have in common? Small populations."
Addendum: And Mormons.
... And smaller brains (sorry, couldn't help it).
ReplyDeleteUmmm, yes could have helped it.
ReplyDeleteLoser.
And yet, Obama wins with 53% of the vote.
ReplyDeleteWhy are we name calling over a political map that my or may not be accurate? The biggest problems in our country are hate and GREED. All others stem from these 2.
ReplyDeleteAn admittedly cheap shot...
ReplyDeleteI just can't for the life of me understand how the majority of Republicans (who I assume are not rich) repeatedly vote against their own best interest. They voted in a rich kid who never fought or worked a day in his life.
They voted in a guy who was AWOL from the service over guys who actually fought- not to mention a guy with five deferments because he too was somehow more patriotic. They voted in a guy who took us from a whopping surplus and put us in unimaginable debt via a totally unnecessary war at a cost of $200 million per day to kill the very people we were supposed to "liberate!" Healthcare anyone? And they vote for people who purposely put incompetents in government to "show us" that government doesn't work.
Over and over again, they wave the flag and raise the cross, and sure enough Republicans blindly come marching in lockstep- guaranteed... Not to mention that those railing against adultery and homosexuality the loudest repeatedly prove to be engaging in it the most.
Again, it was an admittedly cheap shot, but no one died on account of it, and I didn't make it behind a cowardly anonymous veil.
Hear, hear!
ReplyDelete..and yet, amazingly, many of those "smalled brained" people, as you would say, are actually quite intelligent, and do very well for themselves. So perhaps instead of jumping to the (obvious to you) conclusion they are all dim-witted, you might want to try to understand why they vote as they do. If you actually try to understand someone, it can go a long way towards being able to communicate and influence them.
ReplyDeleteOr, we can all just stick our tongues out at each other, and put our fingers in our ears, and think how stupid the other guy is.
..oh, and I meant to comment on the post itself. Two things which can deceive about that data:
ReplyDeleteFirst, being 'democratic' doesn't necessarily mean the voter will vote democratic in a national election. A good example is the south, or my own state of Missouri, where people tend to vote the democratic party heavily in local elections, and yet will go republican many times in national elections. This is because the national democratic party does not represent the same values the "bible belt" voters believe.
Second: oftentimes an area will have more people who tell the surveyors they are democrats, but the number of VOTING democrats is much smaller. As a rule, the percentage of republicans who actually make the effort to vote is much higher. This, despite yearly efforts of the democratic party to "get out the vote"
Mike, there's certainly no doubt whatsoever that many Republicans do very, very well for themselves- and very much want to keep it that way.
ReplyDeleteAnd again, it was a cheap shot (last time I'll say it). My bad, mea culpa.
Perhaps you can start the dialogue by addressing any of the points I raised.
Or we could simply start with the "Republican version" of Christianity- a complete bastardization of Christ's teachings which were about love, forgiveness- and giving up all your worldly possessions just to follow him... Whenever I've attempted that conversation, all I get is fire and brimstone, wrath and damnation- all the rantings of the Old Testament, which preceded Christianity.
Hey Stan, I could address your points, though I think we'd agree on many (if not most) of them, believe it or not. I also agree that the common American version of Christianity is not what Christ had in mind.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, if the churches of America followed the Bible (i.e. "True and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to help orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world") we wouldn't need all the government social programs.
But anyway, this really isn't the appropriate place to hijack the discussion. Suffice it to say that many of my republican and democratic friends don't vote FOR a president, they tend to vote AGAINST a president. I'm much the same way.
Mike, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about, but I probably agree with you.
ReplyDelete:.)
Oops - you were probably talking to the other "stan" - never mind. Shouldn't drink Chardonnay before answering blog comments...
ReplyDeleteFair enough Mike- and thanks for letting me vent Stan...
ReplyDeleteI was a Republican most of my life, and my parents and grandparents were Republicans all their lives. Then the party sold out its principles for the so-called Christian vote. The went from wanting government out of private lives to wanting to control what goes on in citizens' bedrooms. They abandoned reasoning for ad hominem attacks. I could go on, but won't. It makes me ill.
ReplyDeleteI have officially been a Democrat since the 1988 Republican convention horrified me. I'm glad my parents didn't live long enough to see the Grand Old Party become a dirty joke.