The unlikely voters

[mekender]

Am I the only one that thinks that the polls in this election are missing a HUGE number of people.

I suppose what I am talking about are the ones that would never vote, and have never voted, but for one issue in this election. The fact that a black man is running.

Now I am sure that there are lots of blacks in the inner cities that fit this category, but I suspect that there are a HUGE number of whites that live in rural areas that fit this category too. Ive known people like that most of my life so it isnt a far stretch to imagine that there will be a large number of them turning out to vote against Obama simply because he is a black man.

I dont know if it is just me being crazy, but as someone that has lived all his life in the south, I feel that racist feelings are alive and well and that will be a huge factor in 2 months.

discuss..

[Erik]

I'm not so sure. I'm not any kind of expert on US voting patterns, but I cant see how it would make much difference.

As for the innercities, most of them are solidly Dem anyway I think, and adding voters wont help much. And if there were so many real voters to be found there, the Dems wouldn't be doing the ACORN thing, and add try to stuff the voter rolls.

As for the south, I never been in the real south for any duration of time. But even if you could get lots of new Republican voters there, they wouldn't do much difference in this election, except for New Mexico and maybe Florida.

My impression of the US in general, from the time I've spent there in different places, as well as travelling around, it's that it's a lot less racist than you get the impression from the media and movies. My impression is that Europe is a lot worse, but it's more like an undercurrent here, it's not very obvious.
But that's just my personal opinion. YMMV

[308Mike]

I'm not so sure. I'm not any kind of expert on US voting patterns, but I cant see how it would make much difference.

Yeah, they're going to cancel each other out.

[mekender]

i dunno, i just have this suspicion that the good old boys will be putting down their bush beer cans and getting on their best camouflage hats just to go out and vote against a black man... time will tell for sure...

[Darrell]

Lefties are saying you're a racist if you don't vote for Obama. I don't care about his skin color, I don't like his politics--flaming socialist and Chicago Machine Democrat tells me what I need to know. That said, I was discussing this with one of my sisters, I told her he won't be elected because a: he's black, I don't think the country is ready for a black president yet; b: his middle name is Hussein; c: his last name rhymes with Osama.

[Jered]

Lefties are saying you're a racist if you don't vote for Obama. I don't care about his skin color, I don't like his politics--flaming socialist and Chicago Machine Democrat tells me what I need to know. That said, I was discussing this with one of my sisters, I told her he won't be elected because a: he's black, I don't think the country is ready for a black president yet; b: his middle name is Hussein; c: his last name rhymes with Osama.

Teddy Kennedy called him Osama.

That's funny there I don't care who ya are.

[cu74]

Gonna be interesting. My guess is that a lot of those Good Ole Boys haven't bothered to register and won't be able to vote. I grew up in the South and know a wee bit about the Good Ole Boy mentality - drinking beer and complaining is a lot more fun than that inconvenient registration process and actually going to the polls and voting.......

ACORN and the Community Organizers have been hard at work registering the urban idiots, and I fear they will turn out the vote for the Evil Party.

[mekender]

Gonna be interesting. My guess is that a lot of those Good Ole Boys haven't bothered to register and won't be able to vote. I grew up in the South and know a wee bit about the Good Ole Boy mentality - drinking beer and complaining is a lot more fun than that inconvenient registration process and actually going to the polls and voting.......

yeah but Mccain has been sending them regestration cards in the mail with return postage paid... hell i got ones for me and each of my 3 kids already

[toad]

Chris mentions the Bradley effect. That comes from an election in California where the people said they'd vote for the Black candidate Bradley. Then after the election it turns out about 5% of the people polled lied.

During the last two presidential elections the polls have gotten it wrong. There seems to be a pattern of oversampling Democrats.

Then people who only have cell phones don't show up on the polls but pollsters say they have "compensations" for that now.

One factor is that no non Southern liberal Democrat has won the Presidency in 50 years.

Another factor is that while the sitting President usually gets blamed for a bad economy, the current Congress which is controlled by Democrats has an approval rating that is barely half of what the Presidents is.

Rumour has it that the Obama people have been thrashing as much as they have because internal polling shows them sliding down the shute, and too many people are expecting payback from an Obama victory. The Debt collectors may be very nasty.

[mulligan]

I suspect the previously unmotivated racist vote is a hinge-pin for the dems this time around. I think they are banking heavily on the hope pro-black racists are more plentiful and easier to herd through the process than pro-whites.

More voters is a good thing but I seriously doubt we want race to be the deciding factor in any election.

It's a bit scary that one side is saying we need more informed voters and one side is saying we need more uninformed voters. ... .well no.. that's probably commonplace.... what's scary is how close they are to winning......