BREAKING: Siena will release NY-21 Owens-Doheny poll Monday
by Brian Mann on September 7th, 2012
Folks at Siena say the poll will be released at 6 am Monday morning. So…a weekend of suspense and then we’ll have our first real independent snapshot of the North Country’s House race between Rep. Bill Owens (D-Plattsburgh) and Matt Doheny (R-Watertown). Green Party candidate Donald Hassig is not mentioned in Siena’s press release, below.The Siena College Research Institute will release a new Siena College Poll Monday, September 10th, featuring the attitudes of likely voters in the New York 21st Congressional District race between Democratic Representative Bill Owens and his Republican challenger, Matt Doheny. This is a rematch of the close 2010 election, which Owens won 48-46 percent, with six percent going to Doug Hoffman on the Conservative Party line, which Doheny has secured for this year’s election. The 21st CD covers all or parts of 12 counties in Northern New York.
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“Breaking: a poll will be released in three days.”
Worst journalistic misuse of the word ‘breaking’ ever.
It’s not a “real independent snapshot” if it doesn’t include all the candidates – it’s Republicrat propaganda.
Though I suppose it’s a good indicator of how slavish American journalists, even otherwise good ones, are to polls.
The urgent ‘breaking’ tag implies that somehow, we as voters won’t know what to think until we know how our fellow North Country-ers are thinking. Are we the voters really that lemming-esque?
Wait, don’t answer that.
As near as I can tell, it includes all serious candidates. Go ahead…..
I didn’t say serious candidates, I said candidates. Just because you are not a serious candidate, does not mean that your positions and ideas are not important to the electorate.
What we need are new ideas to compare and contrast to the ideas of the so-called “serious” parties in order to make smart decisions (before, during and after election time).
Brian/John –
-Yes, it’s breaking news that we have just learned that for the first time in a year-long race a pollster will release an independent survey of one of the most hotly-contested races in New York.
-Polls are very very important parts of modern political campaigns. You may not like it, but journalists would be willfully misleading their audiences to ignore the fact.
-Surveys provide information about races. Passing along information is what we in journalism do. You guys have made an ideological decision that this information is bad for people. That’s a legitimate opinion to take. My job isn’t to decide what information is good or bad for people to have. My job is to report information fairly and accurately.
-Full disclosure, I also disagree with you on the fundamental aspects of this. Polls do help us understand what’s going on in a race. If done well (and the vast majority of them ARE done well) they give voters and the public a better sense of why campaigns are doing what they’re doing.
-Finally it’s not up to us to decide whether or not Siena includes Donald Hassig in their survey. If they don’t, we will certainly report that fact. If they do, we’ll report whatever numbers they come up with.
–Brian, NCPR
Brian, you and all your fellow “journalists” would be doing us all favor to never mention what the polls say.
They encourage some people to vote for the the one at the top of the poll because they want to be on the side of the “winner.” Sheep like to follow sheep.
The proof that polls really are very accurate were the polls that showed Al Gore won in 2000.
I challenge all of the people who are disparaging my candidacy to visit my website at the URL found below. If they will just do that much to open their eyes, they will find that I am a very serious, very strong, very good, very significant candidate.
If it is true that Sienna College did not include me in the polling that they have just conducted, then their poll is nothing but misleading information.
joyous in Nature-Viva the Revolution,
Donald L. Hassig
Bill Moyers just interviewed Jill Stein, running for President under the Green Party. She is excellent and should be included in every Presidential debate.
http://www.jillstein.org/
On the same show Moyers also interviewed Bernie Sanders. Wouldn’t it be great if those two were on a national ticket! That might enlighten the national discussion a bit.
Mr. Hassig – You failed to provide a URL for your website.
–Brian, NCPR
myown, I think the world of Bernie Sanders. I don’t really know Jill Stein well, but I support the goals of the Green Party. But after seeing the disastrous effect of the Nader candidacy in 2000, I’m seriously opposed to third party presidential candidates, unless and until we change the way we elect presidents in this country. Yes, Obama is governing basically as a moderate Republican, and that is sad (especially to see Republicans trying to label him a Socialist!) But I think history will judge the eight years of G.W.B. as among the most shameful of this once great nation. It’s not worth taking the chance of a repeat.
Walker, I have the same feeling about Nader. Moyers asked about that and she had figures that dispute the claims about Nader and other 3rd party effect on elections. I would need more info before I change my mind on Nader. Jill also had examples where 3rd parties moved the nation on progressive issues. I am very disappointed with Obama over many policies but Romney would be a total disaster. In NY it would be “safe” to vote Green since Obama has it locked up.
I am much more concerned about the election being stolen in states with computerized voting machines and the voter suppression efforts by Republicans to prevent/discourage minorities, seniors, students, low-income, etc. from voting.
I read this interesting article today on voting in Canada, and Germany’s requirement for hand-counting paper ballots to protect voting integrity:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/what-voting-can-look-like.html
“Moyers asked about that and she had figures that dispute the claims about Nader and other 3rd party effect on elections.”
I think you’re talking about this, from the Moyers interview:
But the Wikipedia article on Nader says
Stein and Honkala may have a good handle on the problems we face, but they seem to me to have no clue as to how we get to a solution.
Bernie is right: step one is to get the money out of politics. Can it be done? It looks like a huge, quite possibly insurmountable challenge. But unless and until you accomplish that, there’s no hope at all. To have a true multiparty democracy in this country, you would have to make changes that are almost unimaginable, as long as money rules our politics. And a third party is just not going to win a national election under our present system– even Teddy Roosevelt couldn’t do it.
And yes, you’re right, the idea of putting private corporations in charge of counting the vote is horrifying.
I know that at my age I’m supposed to think that the world is going to hell in a handcart, but you know what? It really is.
Ralph Nader isnt to blame for Al Gore’s loss in 2000. For one thing…he won!
Al Gore is to blame for not accepting his position as President. He should have declared victory and moved into the Whitehouse. He should have asked fro a recount for all of Florida and he should have sued to stop the Supreme Court for taking a role in the election that the Constitution gives squarely to the Congress. It was a clear case of Right wing judicial activism.
The problem of Nader in 2000 is that he was a man ahead of his time.
The agenda of Occupy in 2011-12 is virtually identical to Nader’s agenda in 2000 (and before and since). Liberals are too myopic to notice this.
Nader also challenged people who called themselves progressives to actually vote for progressive candidates, to actually have the same backbone that conservatives have used so effectively to advance their medieval agenda. In politics, something, no matter how awful, nearly always beats nothing. Nader realized this. So does Stein. Most self-described progressives still don’t.
This is why most self-described progressives suck. They support those who undermine progressive ideals and hate on those who push them. And then get all “woe is me” about how stupid and irrational the “sheeple” or. What’s more irrational than voting for what you claim to oppose and against what you claim to support?
And Stein will not be included in any debates because the “bipartisan” (not non-partisan) debate commission is controlled by the two corporate parties and sponsored by major corporations who don’t want any non-corporate voices heard.
Walker, thanks for the research – it always seemed pretty clear that if Nader wasn’t a candidate the Florida vote wouldn’t have been an issue and Gore would have been President. Yes, Gore should have been more assertive but without Nader there is no need for a Florida recount or Supreme Court decision.
Brian, I understand what you are saying but here’s what I wrestle with. Without Nader, Gore would have been President. Instead we got 8 years of Bush, which even most Republicans know was a disaster. So how did a vote for Nader help the country or further the progressive agenda. It didn’t and we slid backwards in many areas. I assume you would agree that Gore would have been far better than Bush. Now what if a progressive candidate took enough votes away from Obama and Romney was elected. We would move even further back into the dark ages.
The most progressive Democratic Presidential candidate the past 40 years was George McGovern. And he won only one state. The reality is progressives haven’t been able to adequately sell their agenda to the American people the past 40 years. Why? – that is another whole debate. But at this point we can’t afford to allow the more regressive candidate to win by splitting the vote. And today’s Republicans are far more to the right than 40 years ago. Eisenhower, Nixon or Reagan would not be the Republican candidate of 2012.
So that is my dilemma, do I vote for a progressive like Stein, who has no chance to win, for the sake of purity? Even at the risk of allowing the more anti-progressive candidate to win? Or do I hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils? The sad reality of the recent experience with Gore-Bush speaks very loudly.
Lesser of two evils, all the way!
Though I do sympathize with the bumper sticker slogan “just once, I’d like to have a chance to vote for the greater of two goods.”
Look, if we could get the money out of our political process and adopt something like a parliamentary system in which one or more minority parties had real clout, then voting for the Green Party would make sense nationally. Until then, forget about it (except in primaries).
What a load of nonsense! I can’t decide what is more ridiculous, the continued crying over the Bush victory in 2000, the idea of changing the US to a parliamentary system, or the concept of not voting for the candidate you favor for fear of a victory by a candidate you hate? Seems like the 3M who voted for Nader in 2000 want to have had it both ways, but that’s not how it works. By the way, Nader’s total fell to 466K in ’04 so what’s the excuse for Bush’s re-election victory?
And speaking of wanting to have it both ways, it occurs to me that all the liberals who have been crying about Republicans obstructing Obama’s every move tried precisely the same thing on Bush for 8 years!