For all those still trying to figure why John Kerry lost or how George Bush won, Mystery Pollster Mark Blumenthal has summarized yesterday's release of the National Annenberg Election Survey's (NEAS) look at Hispanic voter preference in 2004. Since election night there has been an ongoing debate in the polling world about the validity of the exit poll which measured Bush's share of the Hispanic vote at 44 percent -- up nine percentage points from 2000. The NEAS poll of 81,422 Hispanics measured Bush's support at 41 percent, with a three percent margin of error. Mystery Pollster thinks the NEAS is worth paying attention to:
[T]he report makes strictly apples-to-apples comparisons of interviews done over the same period time in its 2000 and 2004 surveys, and this sample has none of the clustering issues inherent in exit polling. The unusually large number of interviews helps show where Bush's gains (from 35 percent in 2000 to 41 percent this year) occurred. For example, those increases were greatest among Hispanic men and those living in the South and Northeast.
From one election to another: Matthew Yglesias has his doubts that "physical security" should be a bigger concern than "basic integrity of the voting and vote-counting process" in the upcoming Iraqi elections. He writes, "A massive post-election dispute between Allawi and the United Iraqi List about who cheated whom when ... could be totally catastrophic and lead to the disintegration of the whole enterprise. I would worry a lot more about that last point" than violence.
Across a couple of borders to Israel, Laura Rozen is flummoxed by the mainstream media's absence of attention toward a foreign policy skirmish with our ally in the Middle East:
Still no major American media coverage of the big tussle between the Pentagon and Israel over an Israeli contract to upgrade a weapons system for China. Here's the latest from Ha'aretz. I am baffled. A story that has Douglas Feith, Tel Aviv, arms sales, and a hardening neoconservative policy towards Beijing in one place, and one doesn't see a single mention in the NYT, the Washington Post, or the LA Times.
Instapundit is also talking foreign affairs, offering an unsympathetic reaction to aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres' call for the warring parties in Darfur to respect its neutrality. Instapundit responds, "When you're trying to save people that others want dead, and to free people that others want enslaved, there's really no such thing as 'neutrality.'"
And with the year almost over Myopist at Redstate.org is in a pensive mood, mulling over John Kerry's "kharma debt" and, in turn, building up one of his own:
I mean, what did Kerry do in his last lifetime, defraud an orphanage, or something? Bad enough for him that he used up valuable money and lifespan losing an election that he spent forty years preparing for; worse that he'll never, ever get another chance, and the best that he can look forward to are nice seats at Democratic conventions. This is a harsh fate for a politician, but my heart was hardened against him.
Good luck in 2005.
