Senate Candidate Wants to Ban Polling

Masker writes "This is just too funny. Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, who is running against Democrat Barack Obama, wants to ban political polling for 'a certain period' before the election, since such polls are 'manipulative and degrading and damaging to our political system.' Could his opinion be influenced by a recent poll that shows Keyes trails by 45 percentage points behind Obama?" Could be. But it could also be influenced by the fact that polls are often wrong; they influence how people vote (people are less likely to vote for someone who "doesn't have a chance"), and polls get reported on more than issues, which can't be good for anyone except the pollsters and whoever happens to be leading the polls.

And?

[QuantumG]

influence how people vote

Isn't it the duty of every good citizen to try to influence how others vote? What are we supposed to do, lock ourselves in a political cage for 6 months before every election so as not to influence other voters? Cool, we can all go to the polls with no idea what the issues are we're voting for. Oh wait, I forgot, this is bipartisan politics, there are no issues.

Other reasons he's behind in the polls?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois

It should be noted that Alan Keyes isn't FROM Illinois, he is merely running [washingtonpost.com] in the Senate race. I don't think that in itself is bad, but it is probably one of the many reasons he is trailing in the polls.

I seem to remember Keyes once saying that people from out-of-state SHOULDN'T run for a state office, but I can't find that quote now, so maybe I'm just spreading nasty rumors. But it's ok, because I fufilled my duties.

So Alan Keyes, another Republican who wants to control things. There was once a day when Republicans were about NOT controlling things, but that time is long gone.

Commentary

[unixbum]

Posted by pudge on Thursday September 23, @08:32PM from the good-idea dept. Masker writes "This is just too funny. Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, who is running against Democrat Barack Obama, wants to ban political polling for 'a certain period' before the election, since such polls are 'manipulative and degrading and damaging to our political system.'

Could his opinion be influenced by a recent poll that shows Keyes trails by 45 percentage points behind Obama?" Pudge: Could be. But it could also be influenced by the fact that polls are often wrong; they influence how people vote (people are less likely to vote for someone who "doesn't have a chance"), and polls get reported on more than issues, which can't be good for anyone except the pollsters and whoever happens to be leading the polls.

Does anyone else find the fact that almost a third of this post is commentary?

I agree, polls are bad.

[dbcad7]

Sadly, I have seen the effect of polls...

Perot, Dole, Clinton race.. I was working in a small retail store. The owner (my boss) talked for weeks of voting for Perot (after all Perot was a bidnessman)... I watched the store while he went to vote. He came back and blew my mind by stating "I voted for Clinton, because he is going to win anyway" (this is what I call the football game mentality of polls ... he wanted to be a "WINNER")

Of course after that I always thought of him as a real winner ! :)

I firmly beleived polls should be blacked out at some time period before the actual election day

Personaly, I can wait until the next day to find out the results.. .especialy if it encourages people to vote for who they "really" wanted.

regards

dbcad7

Alan Keyes...

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

is on my permanent .ignore list.

Why anyone takes this loon seriously is mindblowing. This is the guy that called Hillary Clinton a carpetbagger for moving to New York to run for the Senate and then moved to Illinois to do the same. I guess this is just par for the course for the GOP these days though. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is going to help this guy win against Obama. There's no contest.

As for polls, who cares. It's better than 24/7 coverage of IBM typewriters and 30+ year old war stories.

Re:Other reasons he's behind in the polls?

[ophix]

i think you missed the memo. keyes is a politician... that sort of implies he wants to control things.

thats what politicians do... enact legislation to raise their pay/retirement/benefits and screw over everyone else except the rich. this is true for both the republican AND the democratic party, they just cater to differing subsets of the rich. any candidate running in this important of an election is in someone's pocket. such is life.

that being said i am from illinois and am completely against someone running for an office when they do not even live in the area the office is supposed to serve.... but i also think that all politicians should be limited to a single term except in extenuating(sp?) circumstances.

Re:polls are often wrong?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

In particular, an awful lot of Senator and Governor races are basically non-races--anyone could have predicted the outcome without any polls at all. We look to the polls only when its not already obvious who's going to win--and maybe that's the 16% of the time. On the other hand, more polls are probably taken in closer races, so maybe the 16% is actually a really great figure. That article just doesn't tell us enough information. On electoral-vote.com they listed the major polls from the 2000 election, and only two out of 10 or so predicted Al Gore would win the popular vote.

Re:Alan Keyes...

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

The man used to be known for his great oratory skill, even in defense of a fanatically right-wing agenda. In his saner days he would have made a good speech writer for--I dunno, some non-crazy Republican. In fact, when I saw Obama's speech at the convention, it actually reminded me of Keyes. But public speaking was his only skill-he failed twice in a bid for a seat as Maryland's senator. In fact, he's kind of a professional failure, using his Quixotic political campaigns to get attention, then go back to talk radio or whatever. He's ALWAYS hated polls, because he always loses. But there's a glut of people like that in both parties.

He's got a strange kind of intellectual honesty--I believe he's brought up that comparison to Hillary himself several times in his Illinois campaign. He believes what he's saying and always manages to make a fairly convincing argument for it.

It's just too bad that what he says is complete madness. Calling Dick Cheney's daughter a sinner because she loves a woman? It may be a logically consistent point of view, Alan, but it's still a fucking monstrously bigotted point of view. Even though it was clear from the start that Obama would win, I was still excited to here Keyes was going against him. But that excitement turned to sickness when I heard that Cheney sound bite.

1996 Alan Keyes would have been an entertaining nemesis for Obama. He was a social conservative, but he was also rather liberatarian. What was so interesting about him was how his speeches managed to tie that apparent contradictions together into a coherent ideology. He was a smart fellow, and I wish he would have made the same conversion to semi-reasonability that Pat Buchanan has made now that Bush has led Republicans into the seas of madness. But, I should have known, the neoconservative fantasies of the Iraq war are exactly the sort insanity-as-idealism that appeals to him. I hope this campaign is the last we hear of Keyes.

Kwazy

[Doc Ruby]

Keyes is off his rocker. A carpetbagger from Maryland who vocally criticized Hillary Clinton for moving to NY to run (successfully) for senator. And the Republicans who picked him, to run a black man against the likely first black senator representing Illinois, shows their contempt for democracy, race, the people of Illinois, and sanity. What's worse is the cadre of other actually insane Republicans he fits in with. How much more obvious a charade could they run?

Re:He isn't all their

[Brandybuck]

Offtopic question time. Prior to a year ago, gay marriage wasn't an issue. Then *boom* the SF Mayor did something controversial and the whole world is calling conservative americans evil nasty fscks for opposing gay marriages. My offtopic question(s) are:

Where were all the pro-gay-marriage politicians before last year? Where were the elected officials scrambling to be the first on the block to have gay marriages? Why is the US the only country being called a primitive throwback for not having gay marriage? What nations had gay marriage last year? This year?

bah

[elmegil]

Keyes is the Jerry Springer of politics. He's an idiot and he's an asshole. He's stated his intention to make one outrageous statement a day until the election, and I suppose this is one of the more recent ones (to go along with his commentary about Mary Cheney "misusing her genitals", etc).

Why he even agreed to enter this race is amazing, and the fact that the state Republican Party saw fit to pull him instead of the number two Primary winner (after Jack Ryan's campaign imploded over relatively irrelevant allegations from a contentious divorce) is a mystery to those of us who live here. The #2 guy was Jim Oberwies, a well known (in Chicagoland anyway) conservative dairy owner, who was a completely viable candidate--easily with more connection to the residents of Illinois than Keyes, and easily conservative enough to be electable with the more conservative downstate electorate.

All Keyes entry does is prove that all the negative rhetoric about Hillary not really being from NY is just so much hot air on the part of the GOP. He's clearly going to lose, and I can't think of any of the republicans I know here who want to vote for him given his public record as a lunatic and a jerk. Being behind 45 points in the polls is probably accurate given the distaste for the man here, regardless of the accuracy of polls in general.

Re:Kwazy

[CodeWanker]

Speaking as a rabid, reactionary, right-wing mega-zealot... Kwazy is right. It's absolutely shameful that Keyes just popped in to have a "Battle of the Darkies" minstrel show. I don't know if it's racist, since I don't know how skin color was supposed to affect this thing one way or the other.

Oh, wait. Now I know... Republicans want to show that they can scrape up a token as well as the democrats can. Okay, so it IS racist... So much for content of your character trumping the color of your skin. Alan Keyes is a major-league non-electable nutball. He's playing this for publicity because the more insanely right-wing religiously-bigoted things he can say, the more his books and radio show appearances sell to his base, his paying audience. So it's a symbiotic relationship, uh, sorta.

The shame of it is the national Republican party could have done a LOT more for REAL racial harmonization of the party by backing Herman Cain [cainforussenate.org] here in good old Georgia. I voted for him in the primary because he's the best conservative candidate. He happens to be black. They've set themselves back a fair piece with ol' Alan up there stirring up the yankees.

The first black president will be a conservative Republican...

There is another Senate Candidate in Illinois

[JohnnyX]

Jerry Kohn [kohn2004.org] is running as a Libertarian. Last I checked, he didn't want to ban polling and he actually shows up for debates [news-gazette.com], something neither Obama or Keyes seem willing to do.

Yours truly,
Mr. X

...let Badnarik debate [badnarik.org]...

Ban exit polling

[Procrastin8er]

I think the only polling that should be banned is exit polling. Media outlets that announce exit polling results prior to even a majority of the votes being counted are not helping the democratic process. They could be keeping some voters away from the polls if they think their vote will not affect the election, when in reality it could. We need more people, in the US, to come out and vote. We need to discourage activities that keep people from voting. All election results should be held until they are considered final.

Re:Other reasons he's behind in the polls?

[TXG1112]

The reasoning is right there in your post.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

What this means is that Government (and it's all of its various branches) can not even appear to prefer one religion over another. This includes allowing any religious displays. How would you like passages from the Koran in Arabic posted in the courtroom where you were on trial? (or for the PC among us, a religion different from your own) What if your local mayor decided to plant a giant gold Buddha on the front lawn of town hall? That would be seen as a massive waste of tax money, and rightly so.

I'd like to point out the God isn't mentioned in our constitution either. Our founders were mostly influenced by enlightenment philosophy.

I recommend you have look at The Jefferson Bible [wikipedia.org] Where he specifically eliminates all supernatural events, and considers Jesus a philosopher, not god.

Re:Other reasons he's behind in the polls?

[Atzanteol]

Some will cry the "Slippery Slope is a fallacy" argument, however in this case, it isn't.

Ahh, but it is. Do we want to be in the business of making things illegal because somebody believes there is a possibility it could lead to something else? What you're proposing is that not only should congress not pass laws against/for religion, but that it should also be restrained from having *anything at all* to do with individual religions. This would include tax breaks for religious charities, and other services that religions do provide. I'm not sure if we want to go that route. Religion in society plays a very important role, whether you believe it or like it or not. I don't think the government can just ignore that.

If a public religious display has no appearance of authority, why do people feel the need to place them in front governmental locations?

Well, if you're Christian and building a court-house, you may be inspired by your upbringing. In your mind you think of all that exemplifies a court house, law, etc. And you think of the 'original 10 laws' given by your God. Seems pretty natural to me (even as a non-christian).

I aknowledge your 'individual' vs. 'using power of office' differences. But I think what we differ on is whether something as benign as the 10 commandments on a court-house steps is indeed an over-reach of ones power in office. It declares no laws, changes no rules in society, imparts no taxes, and enforces no fines. I can feel free to disagree with them (and I do with several), and receive no punishment. I can kiss my neighbors wife on Sunday while taking the lords name in vain and chanting a pagan prayer on the steps of the court-house!

Re:Other reasons he's behind in the polls?

[TXG1112]

Well, if you're Christian and building a court-house, you may be inspired by your upbringing. In your mind you think of all that exemplifies a court house, law, etc. And you think of the 'original 10 laws' given by your God. Seems pretty natural to me (even as a non-christian).

Well as a (nominal) christian it seems very unnatural to me. I am not inspired by a christian architects upbringing, nor should the American Taxpayer be required to support his religious leanings. We have a symbol for justice, and she is blind for a reason. Our courts uphold the laws of man, not god, and that's how I would like to keep it.

To be honest with you, I have considered taking up the position of eliminating the tax breaks that religions get on the grounds that giving them requires the Government to determine what is a religion vs. what is a cult. This makes the US Government the de facto and de jure arbiter of what religion is and is not, which to my mind directly contradicts the letter and spirit of the constitution. While religion plays an important societal role, it is not the governments job to promote it.

As you correctly point out there are many positive contributions that religious organizations provide, making this a hard idea to sell.

What 'The Economist' Says About Keyes.

[tid242]

The politics of tokenism
Aug 12th 2004
From The Economist print edition

The Republicans have made a bad mistake in pitting Alan Keyes against Barack Obama

THREE weeks ago in Boston, the Democrats witnessed the birth of a new black star in Barack Obama, their candidate for the open Senate seat in Illinois. Now the Republicans have conjured up a black star of their own to do battle with the self-described skinny guy with an odd name. Alan Keyes, talk-show host, holy-roller social conservative, Maryland resident and sometime presidential candidate, will take Mr Obama on.

The thinking behind this is beguiling in its simplicity: the Democrats have a black man who can give a rafter-raising speech, so we had better find a rafter-raising black man too. Beguiling, but stupid. Mr Keyes's Senate run will produce nothing but disaster--humiliation for Mr Keyes, more pie on the face of the already pie-covered Illinois Republican Party, and yet another setback for Republican efforts to woo minority voters.

Mr Keyes's problems start with his personality. The Republicans' new champion is the very opposite of cool. In 1996 he chained himself to the front door of a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, to protest against a decision to exclude him from a presidential debate (he was then mounting the first of his two bids for the presidency). His speeches can certainly be eloquent. But they can also be intemperate and plain weird, particularly on the subject of gays.

Mr Keyes's politics are of a piece with his personality. He is a genuine intellectual, a disciple of the great Allan Bloom, and has a PhD in political science from Harvard. But his intellectualism drives him to take absolutist positions on some of the most divisive subjects in American politics. He doesn't just call for a reduction of taxes; he calls for the complete abolition of the "slave" income tax. He doesn't just want to blur the line between church and state like George Bush; he argues that the division between church and state has no basis in the constitution. He doesn't just disagree with Mr Obama on abortion; he castigates him for holding "the slaveholder's position" on the subject.

This sort of absolutism doesn't go down well anywhere in America outside an eccentric fringe. But it goes down particularly badly in the meat-and-potatoes mid-west, where people expect politicians to solve real problems--as the Daleys have done so spectacularly in Chicago, perhaps America's best-run city--rather than waffle on about the meaning of the constitution. The Republicans who have flourished in the region have been middle-of-the-road pragmatists such as Jim Edgar and James Thompson, both former governors of Illinois.

This is hardly an auspicious start. But Mr Keyes brings two further disadvantages to his late-term Senate bid. The first is the charge of "carpetbagging". Illinois is the sort of state where politicians are expected to cultivate their constituencies for years, and where people reminisce about the Cook County political machine's legendary operating style in Chicago in the 1960s. The Democrats are cheerfully claiming that the Republicans are so bereft of talent in a state of 12.5m people that they have to go to Maryland to find any. And they are gleefully reminding everyone of Mr Keyes's pompous scolding of Hillary Clinton, on Fox News in 2000, for running for the Senate in "a state she doesn't even live in".

The Keyes candidacy also smacks of tokenism. The candidate routinely denounces affirmative action as a form of racial discrimination. But what other than racial discrimination can explain the Illinois Republican Party's decision to shortlist two blacks for the Illinois slot--and eventually to choose Mr Keyes? He brings no powerful backers or deep pockets, and was thrashed in his two runs for the Senate in Maryland.

Desperate measures

The Illinois Republicans are not just guilty of tokenism. They are guilty of last-minute scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel t