McHenry County Blog

To its credit the Associated Press (reporter Sophia Tareen) wrote a story about the Illinois Tea Party endorsement for Congressman Don Manzullo.

But, wait a minute.

This Associated Press article by Sophia Tareen is stimulated by the Illinois Tea Party's having endorsed Congressman Don Manzullo over Congressman Adam Kinzinger. How on earth a 2010 Sarah Palin endorsement of Kingzinger is relevant is beyond understanding.

In its first paragraph reporter Tareen mentions a 2010 endorsement of opponent Adam Kinzinger by Sarah Palin.

What’s that all about?

And worse, the Chicago Tribune, in at least it’s online edition gives Palin’s old endorsement equal coverage with the Illinois Tea Party’s current endorsement.

This is an example of why readers distrust the mainstream media.

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I felt so strong about this bias, I called the Associate Press in Chicago. The Bureau Chief’s assistant sent me to an editor who knew nothing about the article.

She had to look it up using “Illinois Tea Party” as search words.

“Are you calling from Sarah Palin’s campaign?” she asked.

“No, I’m calling from this is why we distrust the mainstream media,” I replied.

She repeated “This is why we distrust the mainstream media,” pausing while it sunk it.

“Is it incorrect?”

“No, it’s out of context,” I replied.

“That’s your opinion.”

“What does a 2010 endorsement have to do with a 2012 endorsement?”

“That’s your opinion.”

“And that’s why AP is going down the tubes,” I said before thanking her for her time.

There is a subtle way to skew polling numbers. Especially when polls in the last month of various races are of likely voters as compared to registered voters.

The technique centers around these basic facts:

• The highest voter turnout for a midterm election since 1960 was when it hit 48.4 percent in 1966.
• In 2006 it was 37.1 %
• In 2002 it was 37.0 %

The turnout info was found here.

What some pollsters recently did for certain polls was to make the cut off for “likely voters” such that it excluded only 6 percent of registered voters, for example.

This skews the results because you are sampling far more registered Democrats and Democrat leaning independents. And plenty of people who are really not going to vote.

Newspapers with liberal leaning editors I suspect also allow their polls to be structured like this.

I suspect that you can’t reliably predict turnout for this election based on historical numbers for turnout.

Why? I have never seen an electorate so stirred up and eager to say “We’re not going to take this nonsense anymore.”

I think we will see a normal backlash from a majority of people who will take the time to vote.

Liberal journalists and commentators call this “anger.

I think it’s more likely disgust.

It is a normal reaction to yell, “Stop!” when your child, children or family members are about to permanently injured.

Or put in debt hole they will have a very hard time climbing out of.

It is a normal reaction to do something about the people who caused the problem and threaten to take even more money out of your family’s wallet.