Wednesday, April 05, 2006
posted by Cindy from
HeightsMom The Suffolk Poll had the questions broken down into numerous formats. Some of these were how a respondant answered according to thier party affliations, income, location, age, sex, ect, ect - You get the picture.
Anyways - here is how the Independents answered the favorability questions (Is your opinion of candidate X generally favorable or generally unfavorable?):
Who do the Independents like? (
crossover appeal in parenthesis)
- Mike DeWine - 53% Favorable with I's (34% with D's)
- Jim Petro - 38% Favorable with I's (21% with D's)
- Ken Blackwell - 33% Favorable with I's (17% with D's)
- Ted Strickland - 33% Favorable with I's (31% with R's)
- Sherrod Brown - 29% Favorable with I's (29% with R's )
- Paul Hackett - 12% Favorable with I's (17% with R's)
Not very surprising. The Republicans certainly have an edge with Independents. But as far as crossover - DeWine, Strickland and Brown all had more crossover appeal than I expected them to have, especially DeWine. Brown had a higher crossover number than Petro, Blackwell or Hackett. It seems important to point out that respondants did not have to choose one candidate over another. So, in primary races the respondant could have answered "favorable" to all candidates.
Who do the Independents dislike? (
dislike within own party in parenthesis)
- Ken Blackwell - 31% Unfavorable with I's (21% with R's)
- Jim Petro - 26% Unfavorable with I's (20% with R's)
- Mike Dewine - 24% Unfavorable with I's (17% with R)
- Sherrod Brown - 14% Unfavorable with I's (16% with D's)
- Paul Hackett - 9% Unfavorable with I's (12% with D's)
- Ted Strickland - 7% Unfavorable with I's (7% with D's)
Ted Strickland looks really great here. Brown seems to fair a little better than DeWine. Funny how the Republicans were both the most "Highly Favorable" and the most "Highly Unfavorable" with I's. As far as inside party discontent, all of the Republicans had more "unfavorable" marks from within thier own party than the Democratic candidates.
This Favorability question in the Suffolk Poll could have been answered 4 ways - Favorable, Unfavorable, Undecided and Do Not Know" the candidate. Between 15 and 20% of respondants answered "Undecided" for all of the candidates. Who they answered "Do Not Know" the candidate for - surprised me a little, at least, the region where it was coming from.
Who Didn't Anybody Know?
55% Didn't even know who Paul Hackett was. (It broke down 47%D, 57% both R &I)
I expected Mr. Hackett to be less known than other candidates since he hasn't really run or held statewide office before but - this number was much more than I expected. Of the 55% who did not know who Paul Hackett was - by far the highest concentration was the Cincinnati/Dayton region! How could respondants in the Cincinnati/Dayton region not know who Paul Hackett was? Isn't that where he ran? This seems weird to me. I had really expected Paul Hackett to be doing better here. In contrast, only 9% did not know who DeWine was. This poll was taken in March, right after Hackett dropped out of the race. ( Hackett was getting a lot of press and had been in the blogosphere nonstop since the special election.) I just assumed, he would be better known than that. I guess, I am a little isolated in my own blog world.
Some other things that I didn't expect from the Hackett question were that NE Ohio gave him the highest favorablity marks. Toledo and the NW portion of the state knew him the most but were also the most undecided about him. Also, respondants whom stated they were voting for Sherrod Brown gave Paul Hackett the most favorability marks.
57% of the Suffolk Poll was comprised of people who proclaimed themselves as Unenrolled in a party, Independant or Undeclared. The rest of the respondants were pretty equally D's and R's.
Another shocking revelation:
Jim Petro was the candidate most popular with the ladies :-) Yikes!
Sometimes, I get a little caught up in internet and blog politics and I forget the rest of the world is set at a different pace. This poll offered me a little insight on the true make up of our state. It also makes me ponder whether political bloggers are trendsetters, running a little ahead of the pack or just isolated in an internet clique. My conclusion so far - a little bit of both.
The Alarm would like to welcome Chris Kelley, the proprietor of the blog Media Watch to the family. Chris is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Chris graduated from The University of Dayton with a B.A. in Political Science in 1987, and with a M.A. in International Affairs in 1989. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Miami University in 2003.
"For Crying Out Loud"
I came across this long form critique against "citizen journalism" by Samuel Freedman, who teaches journalism at Columbia and also writes for the New York Times. So I guess I wasn't surprised to detect elitism in his essay that appears on the blog site for the CBS show, Public Eye.
Apparently Mr. Freedman's beef is with all the hype that has been showered upon blogs as a legitimate challenger to the mainstream media. He comes in to offer a defense that goes miles to show exactly why we are even talking about legions of bloggers who are nipping at their heels. Ready?
"For precisely such reasons, I despair over the movement's current cachet. However wrapped in idealism, citizen journalism forms part of a larger attempt to degrade, even to disenfranchise journalism as practiced by trained professionals. As I said before, I appreciate the access that citizen journalism provides to first-hand accounts of major events. Yet I recognize those accounts are less journalism than the raw material, generated by amateurs, that a trained, skilled journalist should know how to weigh, analyze, describe, and explain." Ugh. Does that sum it up? Is it safe to say that this description explains exactly why we have bloggers in the first place? The Kettering Foundation years ago teamed up with a number of fairly progressive thinkers to articulate the problems with American journalism and then proscribe solutions. What they found was similar to the suffering in other American institutions. In this case, the media had become profoundly disconnected from the citizenry. In fact, the professional revolution in the press in the early part of the 20th century was in fact one of the key problems journalism faced moving into the new century--the term "professional" had come to mean distinct from the masses, speaking a technical language that only other professionals could understand. And you see it in the blurb I quoted above: "..ass practiced by trained professionals..thann the raw material, generated by amateurs that a trained, skilled journalist should know how to weigh, analyze, describe, and explain."
I see two things at play here, and both seem to go directly to an inferiority complex. First, journalists by golly go to college and get a degree, and it is about time someone should start paying them the respect they deserve. Hence they run in the same circles as political elites, corporate elites, cultural elites, and so forth. In the end, they are left with blindspots that make them unable to see the problems that face working class Americans.
Second, because they go to college and get a degree they deserve to be recognized as distinct from the humbled masses. But for the reasons that Mr. Freedman argues for his chosen trade are precisely the reasons why we are even speaking about the competition the MSM have today with "citizen journalists." It is a shame that journalists today do not start from the premise articulated by a federal district court judge in a case involving a free lance journalist who mostly wrote crime novels. When asked if she could be considered a journalist, the judge argued for the definition of a journalist as anyone who dispenses information for public consumption.
One last comment on this story. If journalists wish that we all consider them professionals, then be responsible for the following:
* They should take responsibility for the mess they have made in the public;
* In large part, our citizens distrust their elected representatives because of the anti-political bias in the press forged as a result of Watergate and the role played by Woodward and Bernstein;
* A political system of separated powers to produce deliberation and compromise is undermined when the press rewards those who deal in polemics;
* Either deemphasize your coverage of the presidency only to be shocked at an "imperial presidency" or ramp up your coverage of the other institutions to help along the process created in Philadelphia in 1787;
* Quit taking the cheap and easy route offered up by soft news and engage your audience in their full capacity as citizens and not just as consumers;
* Give your audience what it needs and not necessarily what it wants. We have been down the needs route and look where it has gotten us. You tell us that your audience wants shootings, robberies, car crashes and the rest and yet you continue to suffer in lost readers, listeners, and viewers.
* Get rid of your slavishcommitmentt to objectivity. It makes you vulnerable to criticisms of political bias and it gives a voice to individuals and groups who simply do not deserve it, undermining public policy and our awareness to threat;
* When a politician or corporate head is lying, call them on it. There should be no reason that fact checking is outsourced. If you are truly committed to sticking up for the citizen, then you will have to accept the duty to call a spade a spade. You should not simply be a conduit for spinmeisters;
* When there is elite consensus on an issue you know to be politically, socially, and morally wrong, you have an obligation to step up into an area where others fear to tread. Americans should not have to sit through apologies when their press failed them about important issues such as war.
I could go on, but you get the hint. If a doctor had the sort of track record that our press has today, would he or she still be practicing? How about lawyers? Other professionals?
When you begin to act professionally, accepting full responsibility to fix what is broken, only then will you earn the trust of the public. Until that time, get used to alternative voices pointing out where you fail and how to correct it, in addition to the other basic jobs a free and independent press should be fulfilling in a democratic country such as ours!
I just received this video clip in my email from David Oppenheimer at
Too Poor To Vote Republican.com. This is not a lighthearted look at the foibles of the Bush administration ala "JibJab." If you are looking for a moderate and reasonable discussion of the activities of our Fearless Leader, you will not find it in this clip. If, however, you are as mad as I am at the vast devastation this administration has deliberately brought about, enjoy!
