Continuing on with my super-informal and completely unscientific polling of the nation here we look at the presidential candidates and what the public really thinks of them.
First to see how affiliated everyone is with their party this fun little question was thrown out: "If your political party loses, you believe." 6% believe it will have minimal impact, 14% believe we'll be somewhat worse off, and a whopping 80% of the 894 participants said we would be in big trouble. So obviously the party lines are drawn pretty hard and the candidates can expect to tow as close to the line as possible to pick up those partyline voters.
John McCain has a few issues to deal with as a candidate. McCain is 71 years old and 57% believe that his age will be a problem while the other 43% believed that age will not be an issue with the McCain presidency. Another issue McCain is going to have to elaborate on is the use of torture and specifically waterboarding (which he voted to keep legal after years of preaching the other way). The nation overall sees waterboarding as an illegal tactic with 51% believing it should never be an option while 35% believe it should be used in extreme situations and the rest of respondents believing it should always be available.
So what does America think is the biggest issue heading into the election? Lets find out:
The economy is obviously on everyone's mind with the Iraq war becoming a distant second.
Obama himself has some voter issues to quell. After false reports that he was a Muslim and studied at a known extremist school Obama has had to deflect much of that attention. But what does the public think?
Although a majority of respondents were of the opinion that this isn't true, 38% is a huge number of people who doubt the credibility of his response to false propaganda. Along with these numbers this poll may show how important it is for Obama to rectify the truth with all voters before the elections come around in November.
Again the American biased against Islam shows through in the response and is something Obama may have to go on the attack against if he is to win crucial swing voters.
And Obama has screamed from the loudest podiums about Change for this election cycle and what a new culture he would bring to the White House, but public opinion shows that confidence may be waning. When asked "which candidate do you trust least to make good on promises," Obama "won" with 42% questioning his ability to change the capitol culture.
Even with this doubt 47% percent of those polled believe that Obama has the most trustworthy foreign policy with Clinton coming in with 23% and McCain with 17%.
Hillary Clinton may be fighting an uphill battle also it seems as 67% of 375 people polled showed that they do not agree with Clinton's mandatory health insurance plan. Obama's health plan calls for lowered cost insurance that all American's will be able to afford. So will Americans buy it? 72% of respondents said yes that is true for most uninsured while the remaining 29% believe many would not buy it.
Another problem for Clinton is that she is a very polarizing figure, when asked who would be the least polarizing candidate Obama crushed the competition with 60% of the responses. Hillary fared very badly with this question ranking even lower than John McCain with only 11% stating she is the least polarizing figure.
So putting all of this together, who would America vote for? Out of 888 votes 74% answer Democratic when asked which political party will win the presidency. Out of Democrats 69% of respondents said that Obama has a greater chance of winning the election. Given this information poll participants were asked which candidate they would vote for if McCain and Obama are the nominees. Here's the response:
Given these responses I have to believe that the participant pool is rather slanted toward the Democratic view, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility that the population in general is more heavily slanted toward the Democratic side. These are just some numbers for fun and again are not conducted in a rigorous scientifically sampled study, so take what you want from them.
So I did some informal polling at www.buzzdash.com this week and came up with some good info. I surveyed a good mix of political questions that had at least 300 voters and tried to put them together to make sense of the population's stance on most issues.
First is the war in Iraq.
64% of Americans think the surge in Iraq is a temporary fix while 23% feel the surge is effective at stemming violence. When asked to choose the larger threat to US security between Iraq and Afghanistan, out of 375 respondents 63% answered Afghanistan, 17% said Iraq, and 20% said it was about equal. There is a very clear majority who feel Afghanistan is a bigger threat than Iraq, but what about the rest of the the Middle East?
Two countries and the "other" category score higher than either Afghanistan or Iraq. These two countries, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, are considered the strongest US allies in the Middle East. So why is the general public so afraid of these two countries? It could be that 15 out of 19 9/11 highjackers were Saudi Arabian, or that the Saudi regime has harbored Hamas terrorists and provided medical care to their spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin.
Republican hopeful John McCain has stated that the occupation in Iraq may last for 100 years, when asked whether this policy was good because it finishes what we started or bad because its misguided the poll results showed 78% of Americans feel that McCain's stance is misguided.
Looking back 4 years ago public sentiment was very divided between the war in Iraq and the necessity to pursue Saddam Hussein. How do people feel about the war now?
Out of 700 votes 500 said that in retrospect the war was a bad idea. For me the interesting numbers lie within the "Yes, I see that now" and "No, though I once supported it" columns. These two responses cover the people who have changed their minds about the necessity of the Iraq war. An overwhelming majority of people who have changed their mind about the war have shifted from supporting to disagreeing with the war. Only 2% were against the war initially and later decided it was necessary. The public opinion of our occupation in Iraq has shifted greatly away from support but do our politics reflect that?
One last poll asked participants whether history would judge the war in Iraq as a success. 61% believe it will not be positively judged while 26% say it will be. 12% of respondents thought that to some degree the war will be positively judged.
So what do all of these numbers mean? I really don't think it says who's right and who's wrong as that will take a few decades to sort out, but it does offer a pretty good section of the public's feelings concerning our Iraq occupation. Hopefully the parties will start to reflect this public opinion instead of trying to guide opinion based on politics and scare tactics.
As a disclaimer, these poll results are completely unscientific as the sampling is not carefully controlled and the candidate pool may be biased based on the membership makeup of the polling website. But this does give a pretty good look at some gross trends on these policies.
Out of 700 votes 500 said that in retrospect the war was a bad idea. For me the interesting numbers lie within the "Yes, I see that now" and "No, though I once supported it" columns. These two responses cover the people who have changed their minds about the necessity of the Iraq war. An overwhelming majority of people who have changed their mind about the war have shifted from supporting to disagreeing with the war. Only 2% were against the war initially and later decided it was necessary. The public opinion of our occupation in Iraq has shifted greatly away from support but do our politics reflect that?
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