The Sh*t L*st

CNN released a poll today indicating the support for recalling Gov. Davis among likely voters in the coming recall election was running at 65% and that Schwarzeneggar leads Bustamante in the scab race 40% to 25%. Now it is possible that undecided voters so impressed that Arnold spoke in semi-intelligible soundbites, and didn't expose himself to Arianna Huffington, during the debate that they have been convinced in droves to overlook the utter lack of substance in his campaign (which doesn't require much convincing with many voters, I concede) and vote for him. Or CNN just doesn't fucking know how to run a scientific poll. Remember, this is the network that had Bush consistently up by 8-9 points going into the last presidential election (whereas most other polls were in the 3-4 point range -- the election, of course, ended up in a dead heatwhich, had it been decided by a poll, Bush would have lost.)

The shittiest part of these polls is that they have the potential to become self-fulfilling prophecies. We're tribal animals, many of us, unstimulated by the rigors of objective criticsm and reflexively predisposed to back a winner. At the same time, opponents of Schwarzenegger and the recall may be discouraged from voting if they are led to believe that the election is a fait accompli. With such a gross deviation from other poll results, CNN might have rerun its poll to check its results, or run concurrent polls in the first place, perhaps staggered by a day, to test the volatility in the numbers. They claim a 4% margin of error. Bullshit. Fuck CNN, fuck Arnold Schwarzenegger, and fuck you for seeing his wanker films and helping make him a celebrity.