In what looks like a sign of desperation, the
Republican National Committee has sent fliers to voters in
Arkansas and West Virginia claiming that "liberal
politicians" and "activist judges" want to ban the Bible.
Translation: "Dear Hillbillies: We think
you are dumber than dirt. Are you? If so, then vote for George W. Bush
and keep your Bibles. You’re surely gonna need
them. P. S. There’ll be just as many queers in wedding dresses
either way. Next time you hear about the gay
marriage amendment will be 2008." I doubt the GOP tactic will work.
In Arkansas, appeals to bigotry normally backfire.
The fire-breathing fundamentalists always make more noise,
but their dogmatism scares people. I’ve spoken
to many Christians who resent being told how to vote as a matter
of faith. In Rome, Pope John Paul II’s representative
recently emphasized that American Catholics are free to vote
their consciences, as most would have done anyway.
So will Protestants, Jews and everybody else. But why would
Republicans act desperate? Don’t polls show President
Bush cruising to an easy victory over yet another hapless
Massachusetts liberal? Didn’t 9/11 turn all those
2000 "soccer moms" into 2004 "security moms," comforted by
Bush’s tough talk and his manly Texas swagger?
Speaking of which, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards
recently mocked the exaggerated movie-cowboy walk Bush
bragged about in his acceptance speech: "He’s
walking with his arms a little wider, as if he’s gonna go for his sidearms,"
she said. "I don’t know whether his tailor is
making his suits too tight under the arms or whether he’s adopted a kind
of Gary Cooper-John Wayne walk down the hall
to the podium." If real cowboys walked that way, she might have
added, it was because of gimpy legs due to horse-steer
collisions. Bush became a "rancher" in 1999; he rides golf carts.
But I digress. No, most polls don’t show Bush
swaggering to an easy victory. Only those most touted by the allegedly
liberal media show him leading comfortably. Most
others, including both parties’ internal polls, I suspect, show an
extremely tight contest that appears likely to
keep everybody up late on election night—if not beyond.
At best, polls should be considered roughly as
accurate as racetrack tout sheets. Back in 2000, the brand-name
Gallup Poll showed George W. Bush leading Al
Gore by 13 percentage points two weeks before the election—a
veritable landslide. Its final count showed Bush
up by five. As everybody knows, Gore won the popular vote by
roughly one-half of 1 percent nationwide. Did
that many people change their minds? Or were the polls badly
skewed by poor methodology and wishful thinking?
Truth is, it’s impossible to say. A pollster who
routinely told clients what they wanted to hear wouldn’t stay in business
long, although suppressing voter turnout is always
the GOP’s No. 1 priority. (Rural voters in places like Arkansas and
West Virginia being an obvious exception.) Hence,
polls making a Bush win seem inevitable definitely have their uses.
Several factors make accurate polling trickier
than ever, caller ID and cell phones among them. Many Americans rarely
answer calls from anybody they don’t know. Millions
have only cell phones, whose numbers aren’t published. Persons
without caller ID and/or cell phones skew older
and whiter than the general population; hence, more Republican.
Calculating the odds is tricky. With passions
high, many are reluctant to discuss their political views with strangers.
Some even lie.
For prestige reasons, pollsters invoke "science,"
but do plenty of guesswork. Skeptics have been hammering recent
Gallup CNN/USA Today polls. For example, Gallup’s
Sept. 13-15 poll showing Bush leading 55-42 among "likely voters"
assumed a 40 percent to 33 percent GOP advantage
in voter turnout.
As rival pollster John Zogby pointed out, this
ignores history. In 1996 and 2000, registered Democrats outnumbered
Republicans by four points. That’s an 11-point
swing based on, pardon me, fuzzy math. Determining "likely voters" is
equally problematic. Republicans truly fear high
turnout among impassioned "Bush haters." New registrations among
traditionally Democratic groups are high; hence,
the Bible smear. So is Gallup in the tank? If so, it has company.
Consider a recent CBS-New York Timespoll showing
a big Bush lead. A glance at the poll’s "internals" showed 28
percent of respondents voting for Gore in 2000
and 36 percent for Bush. Since Gore out-polled Bush by a half-million
votes, the results are absurd on their face.
State polls have been similarly wacky. Rival surveys in Minnesota, which
no
Republican has carried since 1932, favored Bush
by two points or John Kerry by nine. Take your pick. Ditto Wisconsin
and Oregon, where polls released within 24 hours
differed by 16 and 13 points respectively. The smart money says to
believe polls like the Pew Research Center, Zogby,
Harris Interactive, Democracy Corps and American Research Group,
which depict an extremely tight race apt to be
decided by voter turnout. That means you.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little
Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/story_Editorial.php?storyid=26184