Weighing In
PA AG: Polls and Money
The now 2-way contest for the Pennsylvania Democratic party's AG nomination is going to be a bruising, tough affair for Democrats Kathleen Kane and Patrick Murphy. And by bruising and tough, I mean that both Kane and Murphy both have real campaign dollars with which to bludgeon one another over issues like - who took the bar, who let which killer go free, who's soft on sexual predators, and who really, really, really hates Wall Street (and Fox News!) the most. The AP reports that both candidates have already blasted past the $1 million raised mark:
Campaign finance reports filed Tuesday show that Kane tapped her family's wealth to raise $2.3 million last year. A nearly $1.8 million loan from her husband was the largest chunk of her fundraising and her campaign ended the year with $2 million.Murphy, a Bucks County resident, ended the year with about $1 million on hand out of the $1.4 million that he raised.
Now - of course the Murphy campaign will make a point to remind reporters (who will generate a free headline or two) that the Kane campaign's financial support is made up largely of...1 millionaire - Chris Kane of Kane is Able Trucking and Logistics. Nothing compared to the every day middle class supporters of the Murphy campaign - I'm conjecturing here, remember.
Expect that financial drama to play out in the days ahead.
On the heels of the Kane campaign's dramatic announcement of $2 million on hand, the campaign just released an internal poll that shows Murphy leading Kane in the initial ballot (40-24), Kane and Murphy tied among voters who know both (45-45), and lastly (and most importantly) Kane above 50% and Murphy wallowing in the mid 30%s after what I'm sure was a balanced and realistic "informed" ballot (35-51). That's an interesting poll, but one might think the numbers - being that they came from a pollster paid by the Kane campaign - are a bit skewed. You're probably asking yourself - why did Kane release such a sensitive internal poll?
That answer is simple - Murphy did it first.
On January 12th the Murphy campaign, trotted out their own internal numbers - likely in response to the anticipated $2 million day the Kane campaign was going to have, and possibly in response to a hit the campaign was taking on Mr. Murphy's failure to take the Pennsylvania Bar exam.
The Murphy campaign poll showed Patrick Murphy, of all people, leading the then 3-way for the Democratic nomination. He had at double digit lead over Kathleen Kane (36-15). The poll even had Murphy leading in Kathleen Kane's backyard by double digits (31-21).
Dueling internal polls, dueling millions, one can only surmise that there's not going to be a kitchen sink left in either campaign by the time this primary fight is over.
Does This Make The Case for Voter ID?
Project Veritas, you know the right leaning video investigation outfit headed by the mildly famous (at least in some political media circles) James O'Keefe, is out with their latest video investigation/reveal.
In the video the Veritas team records themselves requesting and receiving ballots to vote in the 2012 New Hampshire Presidential Primary using names of recently deceased New Hampshire voters. They are handed ballots after giving only a deceased voters name. In some cases the precinct workers try to confirm the right person is front of them offering the address on file - with zero success. I don't think this video is intended to be a commentary on the very hard working New Hampshire poll workers - these good people appear to be doing exactly what's asked and required of them under New jumpHampshire law.
What this video does highlight is how incredibly easy it is receive a ballot to vote throughout this country by simply knowing a few details about a person. While the Veritas folks were only asking for ballots of the deceased - imagine a concerted effort to go in and pull ballots in the name of non-deceased voters, also known as living voters. Let's put it this way - say someone intent on receiving a ballot in another person's name, say Jane Doe goes into a local polling location, receives Jane Doe's ballot, votes, and walks on out the door. 5 minutes later the real Jane Doe walks in, gives her name, and is told no - you've already voted. Her vote has been stolen, right? A seemingly simple step of requesting for a form of government issued photo identification could've frustrated the efforts for the fake Jane Doe, protecting the real Jane Doe's right to vote.
With some organization, this can be done on a grander scale.
Put another way - this type of voter fraud is scalable - and that should be worrisome.
Often government has a habit of fighting the last problem, as opposed to trying to figure out what the next problem will be. It's time to start looking over the horizon to combat voter fraud, instead of waiting for voter fraud to come to our polling places in real, large, election shifting numbers.
Getting government issued photo identification into the hands of citizens isn't hard. The advances in technology, in mobility, security, and price (meaning it's cheap) make a solution to this problem more attainable than it's ever been.
Check out the video below.
Google Rocked Election Results
I'll admit - I didn't look at CNN, Fox, any of the 19 NBC affilates, or anyplace else but Google Elections for my Iowa Caucus results. They did a bang up job. Election night Twitter was alive with others following the Google results. It was exceedingly helpful, and easy to use. No longer were election returns limited to just the select insiders. This time caucus results were available for all to see and use. Upside - mad transparency. Downside - some silly amateur punditry. Overall - very cool, helpful, and gigantic leap forward. Read more about it after the jump.
POTUS: Who's Winning On Google?
Found this little bit of metricizing interesting. Coming from Google politics:
With the Iowa caucuses only a few days away, Ron Paul has maintained his slim lead among likely voters, with all polling firms but one finding Paul leading by single digits for the past two weeks.Online, however, the Texas libertarian has little competition. Paul’s search term totals haven’t just vastly outperformed those for his fellow candidates in Iowa, New Hampshire and nationwide over the past months; [ron paul] is among the most popular News Search queries as well, exceeding even [christmas] over the month of December.
Back in Iowa, which hosts the nation’s first caucuses, only two News Search terms, [iowa] and [news], are more popular than [ron paul]. And nationwide, the only other 2012 presidential candidate making the list of top News Search terms is [obama], which boasts only half as many queries as [ron paul], which has more than doubled in nationwide volume over the past 30 days.
The article points out that after Ron Paul, Texas Governor Rick Perry is the 2nd most popular Republican search query in Iowa - leading all other Republican candidates. Of course how that all translates - well you'll have to read the rest of the article check out the charts here.
Video: What is a Caucus?
So apparently it took a Kentucky boy to explain to the good people of Boston just what in the heck is going on in Iowa with that whole caucus thing. I wonder if former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson spawned any calls into the Fox25 studios asking why that guy had such a funny accent.
Here is link to video of my appearance this morning on @fox25news where we talked IA caucuses: myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/polit…
— Trey Grayson (@KYTrey) January 2, 2012
The good former KY SOS did a great job - even did his part to make sure the good Fox25 anchor had is political handicapping straight.
More Articles...
Page 1 of 9
«StartPrev123456789NextEnd»