How Obama Got Elected
November 18, 2008
From How Obama Got Elected:
On November 4th, 2008 millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama’s limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President of the United States. For many of these Americans, the explanation was rather simple… the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job.
On Election day twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively right after they voted to learn how the news media impacted their knowledge of what occurred during the campaign. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video below seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not.
Zogby called 512 Obama Voters between 11/13/08-11/15/08 with a margin of error of +/- 4.4 points
- 97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates
- Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions
- 57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)
- 81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)
- 82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)
- 88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)
- 56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).
And yet…..
- Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes
- Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter
- And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!
- Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.
- Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey
Weird. I was just reading that mean-spirited blog myself today and thought “Wow, after 8 years of being sore winners, seems like these people are sore losers too.” What’s the problem? The wrong kind of ignorance? Not the type the McPalin campaign was geared toward?
Truth hurt?
Truth? I’m impressed you can actually spell the word. Now familiarize yourself with its meaning and you may be on the right track to rehabilitating your conceptually bankrupt point of view.
Your little icon of McCain shows how insane you really are friedwire. Your fucking messiah won, let it go.
Exactly…………let it go. Obama won. What, exactly, are you aiming for with this thread? a differnt outcome? It’s not exactly like this was a close contest so you must be continueing the Republican campaigin theme of Americans villifying other Americans. YOure percentages are wonderful……….but 100% of the people who voted were Americans making their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote for the candidate of their choice. The Right never had a problem with the media when Ronnie Reagan was their darling.
Nice comment George. Do you have Tourette’s or are you just a bitter little moron who enjoys insulting complete strangers?
This is absurd. You want to know how Obama got elected? It’s very simple. He got the most votes. Why is that difficult to understand?
For a second I wanted to debunk the accuracy of their “correct” answers and comparisons, but I quickly realized that it would make no difference. We’ve said these things before. In my opinion these critics do themselves a disservice with their leading questions and deliberate misrepresentations. If they ever make a valid criticism, no one who doesn’t already share their bias will be listening.
He got a lot of votes from people who had no idea what they were voting for.
Debatable. They had ni=o idea who YOU thought they were voting for.
Oh! that’s different! By all means, call a “do over”
Like the liberal democrats in California are over Prop 8? No, conservatives have more class and respect for the democratic process.
Joe The Plumber… Drill baby drill… Obama pals around with terrorists… I’m scared of Obama because he’s an Arab… I’m a maverick, you betcha…
Yeh, the dumbasses voted Democrat because the Republican campaign was just so jam-packed with cerebral sophistication. Conservatives want to throw stones about dumb voters? Mind the windows in your extremely large glass house.
No one called them “dumb.” The polling points out Obama voters were very misinformed about the man they voted for. One of the voters says so on the video.
You might want to add that this Poll was commissioned by John Zeigler, a conservative radio talkshow host and filmmaker who would be considered the Right’s counter to Michael Moore…………not exactly a neutral person.
You might also want to add that Zogby took the highly unusual step of posting on their website a disclaimer trying to argue this was not a “push poll”, indicating the rest of the polling world thinks it is.
And you might want to consider that many of the questions asked were not vetted against the full population to determine if the target group was representative of the whole population. For example, if 57.4% of the polling group couldn’t say which party controlled Congress, how might that compare to McCain voters or the general population of all voters?