Month: November 2008

Mark DiCamillo, director of The Field Poll in California, talks about polling on 8:

When comparing the findings from The Field Poll’s final pre-election survey of likely voters (n-966) to the Edison Media Research exit poll in California, the biggest differences relate to the turnout and preferences of frequent church-goers and Catholics.

The Field Poll, completed one week before the election, had Catholics voting at about their registered voter population size (24% of the electorate) with voting preferences similar to those of the overall electorate, with 44% on the Yes side. However the network exit poll shows that they accounted for 30% of the CA electorate and had 64% of them voting Yes. Regular churchgoers showed a similar movement toward the Yes side. The pre-election Field Poll showed 72% of these voters voting Yes, while the exit poll showed that 84% of them voted Yes.

The same kind of phenomenon occurred when the first same-sex marriage ban was voted in California in the March 2000 election (Prop. 22), although because of the size of its victory( 61% Yes vs. 39% No) it didn’t matter much back then. In that year The Field Poll’s final pre-election poll, also completed about one week prior to the election, had 50% of Catholics on the Yes side, and accounting for 24% of the vote. Yet, the network exit poll conducted that year by Voter News Service showed them to account for 26% of the electorate with 62% voting Yes.

My take is that polling on issues like same-sex marriage that have a direct bearing on religious doctrine can be affected in a big way in the final weekend by last minute appeals by the clergy and religious organizations.

A Shiite Muslim girl watches from behind a silver plated grill as men take part in the Friday noon prayers at the Imam Hussein shrine in the southern holy city of Karbala, 120 kms south of Baghdad on November 07 2008. Several prominent Shiite preachers in Iraq gave fiery Friday sermons warning against the signing of a new security agreement which would keep US forces in the country for up to another three years. By Mohammed Sawaf/AFP/Getty.

From a Log Cabin Republican e-mail:

Exit polls show Sen. John McCain received at least 1.3 million votes from gay and lesbian Americans—more than any other Republican Presidential candidate has ever received.  He garnered 27% of the LGBT vote, an increase from 19% support for President Bush four years ago.

‘Tis true. Not sure why. McCain did not engage in the kind of anti-gay bile that Bush and Rove trafficked in, and did not grandstand on Prop 8. He had an openly gay chief-of-staff for a long time, which might have helped. And then there were the Hillary hold-overs. That’s my best explanation the uptick in LGBT GOP support this year. Maybe you have others.

It’s always been a smarter approach, to my mind, than the search for an always-elusive vaccine to an always mutating retrovirus. And this looks like a breakthrough – by accident, as so often happens.

Mary Beard regrets California prop 9 passing:

Even worse, in my view, was the passing of Proposition 9, a Victims Rights initiative (paradoxically bank-rolled by a rich Californian currently indicted on fraud and drugs charges). It reduces the possibilities for prisoners’ parole, adds to the vast Californian prison population and give victims of crime a greater voice in the judicial and punitive process. There’s something truly dreadful about this. Sure, we should support the victims. But one of the whole purposes of a state legal system is to break the link the link between culprit and victim – to stop punishment being vendetta.

A crime wave by the over 65s hits Japan:

The number of people aged 65 or older arrested for crimes other than traffic violations totaled 48,605 last year, up from 24,247 in 2002, the Justice Ministry said in an annual crime report. Elderly crimes rose 4.2 percent in 2007 from a year earlier, though the total number of people arrested fell 4.8 percent to 366,002. Thefts, such as shoplifting and pick-pocketing, were the most common crimes committed by older people, the report said, citing low income, declining health and a sense of isolation as the main causes of the trend.

(Hat tip: FP). Monty Python got there first, of course:

Dave Barry peers into the future:

Barack Obama is our next president, which is very bad because he is a naive untested wealth-spreading terrorist-befriending ultraliberal socialist communist who will suddenly reveal his secret Muslim identity by riding to his inauguration on a camel shouting ”Death to Israel!” (I mean Obama will be shouting this, not the camel) after which he will wreck the economy by sending Joe the Plumber to Guantánamo and taxing away all the income of anybody who makes over $137.50 per year and giving it to bloated government agencies that will deliberately set it on fire.

Give the man a Fox News contract!

Full transcript here. Joe Klein was impressed. So was Josh Marshall. I missed it, I’m afraid. Aaron had out-patient minor surgery today and I’ve been husbanding. You know: destroying the sacred institution of the family by taking care of my spouse. Take it away, Maggie Gallagher.

The Hewitt strategy of trying to bring the LDS church – especially LDS money – into a Christianist popular front began with the Romney candidacy. Then it morphed into Prop 8, funded by $20 million of Mormon money. The leadership of the LDS church has every right to do this; but equally gay people and their families now have every right to highlight the Mormon church as an enemy of civil rights and of gay people everywhere. This will be decried as bigotry. But gays are not fighting to remove the civil rights of Mormons; while Mormons have successfully campaigned to remove the civil rights of gays.

Tolerant and inclusive Mormons should not be forgotten; the Mormon tradition of church-state separation should not be ignored either. But toleration goes both ways. Gay people have every right to regard the Mormon church hierarchy as a mortal enemy. If they knock on my door any time soon, they will get an earful.

(Photo: Protest signs are left on the fence of the Los Angeles Mormon Temple as supporters of same-sex marriage continue to protest against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints November 6, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. By David McNew/Getty.)