How did Coakley drop 20 points in one week?

:shrug:

These fuckers can do anything...

Something about Baseball, and it being a man's world or something.

a very narly bunch

I don't know how much coverage it got in MA, but this is the classic "doesn't know how much a gallon of milk costs" mistake.

Messing up which team the player played for.
Mispelling name of the state you are running in.
Taking extended vacation instead of campaigning.
Very lackluster campaign.

All put together starts to create a perception that she is just taking it for granted, doesn't even really know or connect with the voters.

doled out by people like Rupert Murdoch so desperate for a victory.

At first we had advertisements, the public got wise. Then, the corps went to PR firms, ditto. Now, the corps have moved to product placement on cable news shows.

The same with polling. We have progressed from polling to push polling and now, I don't know what to call it, but a form of polling that is controlled by companies to produce a set outcome.

With the data base on the American public so large, they can give the pollsters a list of phone numbers of handpicked samplees.

Husband and I are called 2-3 times a month (in a country of 300+million). The pollster either asks for the youngest male in the household or the youngest female (we are both older than dirt and the only two in the household). If they ask for the youngest female, they are looking for a liberal response, the youngest male, a conservative response. Any question not answered as predicted fall into the 'margin of error'.

It is a simple set up to produce a set result to get the uninformed to go with the flow.

It's not as if Brown hasn't had gaffes of his own. They just don't get nearly as much attention

This is blatent media manipulation. Instead of merely reporting the news, they are quite obviously trying to influence public opinion to produce a desired result.

What are the Democrats to do? If they declare war on the media, the situatiuon will only get worse.

It was more like two months.

The problem was that there weren't really any polls published during that time (early November to early January) except one poll near the end of that period showing her up by 17 points.

What doesn't make sense is that SHE didn't appear to see it coming. Surely the DNC or the candidate would run INTERNAL polls that should have kicked her into gear?

The Democrats want her to lose?

One manipulative tool follows another.

and days & days..
self fulfilling prophetical propaganda

The first poll out which showed her in real danger was a Democratic polling firm (PPP).

Other than the Rasmussen numbers (which at the time showed her UP by 9), nobody else even STARTED a SAMPLE that showed her in trouble until after that PPP poll was released.

PPP shows Brown up 5.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/ma/massachusetts_senate_special_election-1144.html

Also Suffolk isn't what I would call a right wing polling firm.

This got the RWers out of the wood while the other side got in hiding.

It seems to be either:

Opinion polls are fixed, and the real polls probably will be too

or:

She made a couple of gaffes not to do with policy, or politics for that matter, and the MA electorate thinks that's enough for a 20% swing

Either is rather a depressing outlook.

If the exit polls look anything like the internals for the latest polls, we'll be lucky if that spin sticks.

They asked 2 voters why they were voting Republican, and that's what they said; then an interview with Brown had him saying the same thing. He seems to have managed to paint himself as an 'honest, open' politician.

:hide:

There's another example in the Dem. primary in NH.

They are all over the place. Maybe an off year special election near the holidays is not as poll-able as standard elections.

apparently American's are more concerned with their politicians knowing more about local sports vs the law.

the good news is that Brown will be out in 2012 and we won't be stuck with her for six.

Not exactly a win/win, but things could be worse. His term could be a lot longer.

And the other side is still pissed about Obama.