Category: Polling

And the winner is…

Someone finally uncrowned Ridgely Griffith and afterthegoldrush.

Until late Sunday afternoon it looked like the music-based website would cruise to its third straight title in my Best Local Blog contest. But supporters of Delmarva Progressive dropped well over a half-thousand votes on the poll and enabled that site to snatch away the victory.

With a record 1,001 votes cast, the results came in as follows:

  1. Delmarva Progressive, 788 votes (78.7%)
  2. afterthegoldrush, 205 votes (20.5%)
  3. Chesapeake Journal, 8 votes (0.8%)

Chalk it up as a rare liberal victory about these parts. In fact, the 1,001 votes ended up as a figure just a few tallies higher than the total of all nine preceding rounds (six first-round battles and three semifinals.) It’s a definite surprise given the fact Delmarva Progressive only picked up 10 votes in its semifinal – but it is what it is.

So congratulations to the crew over there for winning the contest, and moreso thanks to all who voted.

Drawing the curtain on this year’s contest does allow me to share a couple other thoughts, though.

First of all, the other day I was speaking to a blogging friend of mine from another part of the state who commented on the lack of websites in her area, particularly in comparison to the number of websites in this region. Obviously many of us deal with politics here but there are a number of other interests represented as well – just look at the contenders I had as evidence. If I were to classify the eighteen websites I selected this year, seven deal mainly with local news, three cover politics, and three could be described as personal journals. There were also blogs which covered sports, local history, music, food, and a fairly miscellaneous site as well. And I’m sure I don’t link to every single local website – there may be another couple hundred out there I don’t know about or just don’t get updated frequently enough for me to link to.

As for the contest itself, I based the original concept on the Mobbies, which is a similar popularity contest among Maryland-based blogs conducted by the Baltimore Sun. For the first two years of the contest’s now-three year run this site was among those nominated in the political category. (The political category disappeared in 2011, swallowed up into the formerly-separated news category.) For a site based on the Eastern Shore, I thought I placed rather respectively when I competed.

In my opinion we have a thriving local blogosphere, but one where civility and useful information is on the endangered list. Maybe a local media outlet needs to step up to the plate and have a contest similar to the Mobbies but concentrating on the Delmarva area. It would be a way to reward worthy websites and encourage the general public to visit them, and perhaps it would be an incentive for others to clean up their act.

Like it or not, the blogosphere is here to stay, and it’s up to all of us to determine its direction. Needless to say, I had my own personal favorites among the eighteen I featured but I left it up to the voters to decide who moved on. There’s a logical next step which should be taken, though, and it should feature those sites Delmarva can be proud of.

Blog poll finals set (and other good news)

Yes, this isn’t a serious, weighty topic, but those of you who are interested will be lapping this up.

For the third year in a row I’ve done a ‘best local blog’ competition for fun and as a way to get a few additional readers during a generally slow news period. Sometimes I get a lot of votes and sometimes just a few make the decision.

Anyway, the winners of my three semi-finals have been determined and will advance to the finals with a winner to be announced on Monday – obviously if you follow the final poll it will be self-evident. But here’s how the three semi-finals went.

My first one was somewhat of a surprise, but not really:

  1. afterthegoldrush (#5 seed) – 53 votes (71.6%)
  2. Delmarva Shorebirds Blog (#9 seed) – 20 votes (27.0%)
  3. Delmar DustPan (#1 seed) – 1 vote (1.4%)

It was a surprise that my #1 seed – which had 367 votes in the first round – only got one vote in the semi-final. But I think I know why it did, because it had a particular website as its opposition. I figured afterthegoldrush would do well, though, since it’s won the first two editions of my contest in 2010 and 2011. And Delmarva Shorebirds Blog was only a #9 seed because it was a wild card – in reality it had the fourth-highest vote total in the first round.

Semifinal #2 was fairly disappointing with the lack of participation. I think it’s because that was conducted over last weekend, when a lot of people were not paying attention because the NFL playoffs were on and the weather was nice:

  1. Chesapeake Journal (#7 seed) – 7 votes (63.6%)
  2. Right Coast Conservative (#2 seed) – 4 votes (36.4%)
  3. Random Thoughts of a Citymouse (#6 seed) – no votes

Honestly, I thought Right Coast Conservative would mop up the competition because it had a first-round vote total far higher than the others. Instead the St. Michael’s-based website moves on to the finals.

The last semifinal was, at least, a little interesting. And it featured yet another (mild) upset:

  1. Delmarva Progressive (#4 seed) – 10 votes (58.8%)
  2. The Other Salisbury News (#8 seed) – 4 votes (23.5%)
  3. Sussex County Angel (#3 seed) – 3 votes (17.7%)

It’s intriguing to me that a left-wing blog won on my right-leaning website, but stranger things have happened.

So on we go to the finals, which will be put up shortly and, because I’ve found weekend polls don’t work so well, will get a few extra days for more opportunities to vote.

Now, the other good news: monoblogue has yet another local sponsor. I’d like to thank local attorney Charles Jannace for jumping on board, and encourage more to do the same. As my readership grows, you may find blog advertising to be an affordable yet effective tool in bringing in business. And only a few spots are left because I’m limiting the number of ads sold here. (Less clutter that way.)

So patronize all my local sponsors and tell others they can help too. As you can see, my rates are very affordable.

The Maryland Model (part one)

Over the holidays I did a little bit of light reading, and while I was doing so it occurred to me that the General Assembly session is sneaking up on us rather quickly. In 2011 that session set the scene for what turned out to be one of our side’s rare successes in Maryland, the petition drive to bring the in-state tuition law for illegal aliens to referendum later this year. It appears that will be on the ballot since CASA de Maryland and other pro-illegal groups are dropping the challenge to the petition signatures and narrowing their focus to whether the referendum itself is legal while simultaneously fundraising to sustain the law at the ballot box.

That fundraising: $10 million. What that means: carpet-bombing the media with images of poor, purportedly law-abiding and successful immigrant families being denied a chance at the American Dream due to racist TEA Partiers who hate all those who look different than they do. Don’t believe me? Just watch.

And this nicely leads me into my main points of this post, which will be the first of a multipart series on what I’m calling the Maryland Model. You see, part of my reading over the holidays was this RedState article on what is called the Colorado Model, which led me to read the original post on this strategy from the Weekly Standard back in 2008. Read those articles (I’ll wait for you) then take a look at how the CASA de Maryland folks are fighting the will of the people here in the Free State.

While they have seven pieces to the puzzle in the RedState article, I’ve consolidated these to what I can call the 4 M’s: money, message, media, and mobilization.

Continue reading “The Maryland Model (part one)”

National straw polls still like Gingrich – but for how long?

Anyone who’s a political junkie of any sort knows that the presidential winnowing process will begin in Iowa a week from next Tuesday, January 3, 2012. By the end of that day we’ll have some idea of who the Republicans in that state prefer, with the battle then shifting to New Hampshire a week later.

But what if there were a national primary? Well, there is no such thing, but there were two recent straw polls which attempted to widen the focus out a little bit. These polls were conducted by two different groups: one was the Townhall/Hot Air Primary and the other was the Tea Party Straw Poll. I participated in the former but not the latter.

One interesting facet of the Townhall/Hot Air Primary was the opportunity for a “second choice” vote. As we all know, there are times we have to settle for our second choice as Herman Cain supporters are finding out. But I’ll start with their topline results (poll taken December 13-15):

  1. Newt Gingrich 36.5%
  2. Mitt Romney 18.8%
  3. Michele Bachmann 17.7%
  4. Ron Paul 17.4%
  5. Rick Perry 9.5%

Second choices:

  1. Michele Bachmann 25.4%
  2. Newt Gingrich 20.6%
  3. Mitt Romney 20.4%
  4. Rick Perry 18.2%
  5. Ron Paul 15.4%

There’s more summary here, but I found it fascinating that Bachmann supporters were the most diverse and that those who voted for Ron Paul must not have had a second choice. Jonathan Garthwaite’s article doesn’t mention who those that backed Paul voted in as their alternate selection. Worth noting as well is that Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum weren’t included because they didn’t attain 5% in national polls.

The Tea Party primary had the same frontrunner but also a caveat: four of the seven candidates they polled also participated in a tele-forum held in conjunction with the poll, so results may be a little skewed. I’m denoting forum participants with an asterisk (*).

  1. Newt Gingrich* 31%
  2. Michele Bachmann* 28%
  3. Mitt Romney* 20%
  4. Rick Santorum* 16%
  5. Ron Paul 3%
  6. Rick Perry 2%
  7. Jon Huntsman 0% (0.34%)

Obviously the poll was very skewed in favor of participants, but one can still make a reasonable assumption that Bachmann and Santorum in particular get a heavy dose of their support from the TEA Party, with Gingrich enjoying a more broad appeal among conservatives at-large. On the other hand, Mitt Romney isn’t making the hearts of the right wing go pitter-patter.

Yet there’s another item one can read between the lines. It seems that every time one turned around, Ron Paul was winning a straw poll someplace. But he didn’t do all that well in these two (granted, he didn’t participate in the call so his numbers would naturally be artificially lower) at a time when he’s supposedly becoming the front-runner in Iowa. We hear about Newt’s campaign “collapsing” but these numbers don’t necessarily bear that theory out either. I know Paul has his passionate supporters but too many find his isolationist foreign policy scary. And the trumpeting of the news that we’re no longer in Iraq may take away the Long War issue from the front burner.

As we have seen over the last several months of this GOP campaign, a week means a lot. Since the voting began in the Townhall/Hot Air Primary we’ve had a GOP debate and the media has trained its heavy fire on Gingrich. It’s no wonder some voters are having second thoughts, although some must be on thoughts six or seven by now. The only candidate still in the running who hasn’t had his day in the sun is Rick Santorum and maybe he’ll peak just in time for Iowa. Stranger things have happened.

Another poll update

I’m working on some other writing today but I wanted to take a moment and catch you up on some results from my best local blog poll.

The fourth matchup was a doozy. At first Delmar DustPan took a modest advantage, but then The Other Salisbury News surged over a short period of time to take a significant lead. But it wasn’t enough as Delmar DustPan stormed back to take the round and advance.

In percentage terms, Delmar DustPan ran away with 69 percent of the vote, while The Other Salisbury News rounded up to 31 percent. Salisbury Soapbox picked up less than 1 percent.

Opening round match number 5 is also an interesting battle between a number of somewhat similar sites from around the region, so we’ll see how that turns out.

Catching up

In case you missed it the last few days, my best local blog contest continues in a relatively subdued fashion after the wild first matchup.

In the second first-round contest between three local sites, defending champion afterthegoldrush advanced with an overwhelming 71.4% of the vote, besting Lower Eastern Shore News (19.1%) and Atomic Donkey Brewing, which garnered 9.5 percent. It’s the only poll where all three competitors received votes.

The third opening round affair concluded last night with an upset: Sussex County Angel pounded its competition with 82.1% of the vote, with Delmarva Observer getting the other 17.9 percent. Salisbury News was shut out this time around.

So the blogs advancing to the semifinals so far are Right Coast Conservative, afterthegoldrush, and Sussex County Angel. The fourth draw is quite interesting to me, so I’ll be excited to see how it comes out when the poll ends.

Seedings for the semifinalists will be determined once polling is complete for the first round. I’ll take a holiday break from polling after my six opening rounds are complete, so the contest will then return after Christmas.

Best local blog: the return

This will be the third year that I provide the opportunity to secure bragging rights as the best local blog around, as determined by my readers. For the last two years, the music-based blog afterthegoldrush has come away victorious thanks to Ridgely Griffith’s loyal following, and he’ll get the chance to defend his title this time around as well.

But things will be a little different this year. Last year I had 24 contenders, but it seems that a number of them have fallen by the wayside over the last 12 months. There are 13 which didn’t return because they stopped posting on a regular basis, and I probably could have eliminated another few which are getting updated rather infrequently – but then I would have been back down to a dozen as I was two years ago. Still, I cobbled together a list of 18 contenders – but if you want to nominate another that’s not on the list feel free to comment and I’ll check it out. But there are some guidelines: the blog must be updated regularly (ideally at least once a week), it must be locally based (essentially within the lower Delmarva area), and it can’t be a personality-based website. Those I have so far are all sites I link to, so there are likely others I’m unaware of.

Given those parameters, here are the 18 which will be contending. An asterisk (*) means they are new this year.

  • afterthegoldrush
  • Atomic Donkey Brewing*
  • Chesapeake Journal*
  • Crisfield News
  • Delmar DustPan
  • Delmarva Observer (formerly Delmarva Dealings)
  • Delmarva Progressive*
  • Delmarva Shorebirds Blog
  • Lower Eastern Shore News (formerly The Salisbury Grinch)
  • Random Thoughts of a Citymouse
  • Reflections on Delmarva’s Past*
  • Right Coast Conservative (formerly Right Coast Girl or just Right Coast)
  • Salisbury News
  • Salisbury Soapbox
  • Sussex County Angel*
  • The Other Salisbury News*
  • The Pocomoke Public Eye
  • Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom

If others are included, I’ll work these into the schedule somehow in order to maintain groupings of three, with wildcards added as necessary.

The first poll will be Monday, so blog owners need to let their supporters know this holiday tradition is back!

Bongino newest poll champion

You know, I have so much fun with these occasional polls I do.

As I said in June when I did the last Senate one, I obviously know the polls are manipulated. But in making the assumption that those who would manipulate a poll exist in the same general proportion as supporters in the population at large, I can at least gather a trend. At least in this sort of instance it’s doubtful anyone would lie to a pollster.

These results, though, show a trend which may only be occurring within Republican circles until we know for sure if other key contenders are getting into the party. Here’s how the poll went:

  1. Daniel Bongino – 3,425 votes (75.66%)
  2. Eric Wargotz – 1,068 votes (23.59%)
  3. Robert Broadus – 23 votes (0.51%)
  4. William Capps – 5 votes (0.11%)
  5. Rich Douglas – 2 votes (0.04%)
  6. Rick Hoover – 2 votes (0.04%)
  7. Pat McDonough – 1 vote (0.02%)
  8. Corrogan Vaughn – 1 vote (0.02%)

Having said that a trend may exist, I need to caution those reading into the results that there’s little chance Dan Bongino will get 76% of the vote – I don’t care if the Constitutional Conservatives Fund of Senator Mike Lee has endorsed Dan or not, he’s not getting 75 percent of the GOP vote. In 2006 Michael Steele didn’t even get 90 percent and he was the sitting lieutenant governor, had plenty of name recognition, and basically controlled the whole Maryland GOP apparatus. I can see something in the 40’s for Bongino if all goes right but a lot depends on who else gets into the race and we won’t have a couple possible entrants with statewide name recognition make a formal announcement on their status until later this month.

But I have to admire how Dan is laying the groundwork for his campaign, including people passionate enough to drive internet poll numbers over 75 percent.

Let’s compare this to June numbers, for example. The number of votes cast was nearly the same (4,716 in June vs. 4,527 now) but the results were somewhat different:

  1. Eric Wargotz – 44.87%
  2. Daniel Bongino – 36.28%
  3. William Capps – 17.62%
  4. Corrogan Vaughn – 0.81%
  5. Robert Broadus – 0.23%
  6. Rick Hoover – 0.19%

Since I didn’t figure Capps ever really had 18 percent, the idea of a two-man race at the time had merit. But if Eric decides not to run – and remember, he had not made a final decision as of a couple weeks ago – that only leaves Pat McDonough as a possible major opponent. (I wouldn’t completely discount Rich Douglas either, given his background.)

This election is a little bit different than the last cycle, where the primary was late – so late, in fact, that federal law precludes us from having a September primary again. (Too bad, because I liked that compressed season.) Now there’s less than six months remaining until election day and truly we won’t be really paying attention until after the holidays anyway. It’s possible we could have a post-holiday bid, sort of like Bob Ehrlich’s coyness about his 2010 try for governor, but like Ehrlich it would have to be someone with some name recognition already because the filing deadline is January 11.

In any case it won’t be as easy as voting in a monoblogue poll.

A new feature

A few weeks back I was contacted by an internet entrepreneur who wanted me to try his product. This happens from time to time, but his request was for an interesting reason.

It seems that the creator of SendLove.to had too many liberal websites already signed up and it was skewing his results. Somehow or other he got wind of this site and that it was conservative, and he asked me to install his plugin in order to balance things out.

So I thought, what have I got to lose and I installed it last night. (It was pretty easy, even for me – I’m not really all that much of a WordPress maven.) If you were reading the last dossier I put up and came to it from the Facebook page (thus, going directly to the article instead of through my main page) you may have noticed first that certain names are pretty in pink. In addition there are tabs on the bottom where the comments are with the names Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, and others.  You would see the three I mentioned again (and again in pink) if you saw this page as an individual page because SendLove scans a post’s content for certain keywords and highlights them to solicit your opinion on the person. You can simply vote them up or down, or add a comment.

I can see a couple minor bugs in it – for example, it wouldn’t let me get back to a couple of the tabs once I pulled another down – but even just the little bit I played with it was interesting. I can even bring up past articles and it will bring up any name they have in the system, so I just dinged Ben Cardin quite nicely. (Since I brought him into this post now you can too.) And it doesn’t work from the main page, although I’m told they’re working on this. Since a good portion of my traffic comes directly to a post from Facebook, Twitter, or a search engine this isn’t such a bad omission.

Obviously I talk about national issues and political figures quite a bit, so I would imagine regular readers have an opportunity to weigh in a lot about particular people and follow the discussion from post to post (these are not wedded to one post like a normal comment.) I noticed Nancy Pelosi has a high national rating, for example, so my readers are going to have to take care of that.

As I figured would happen after Labor Day passed my readership is back on the upswing. So give this new feature a try and let me know how you like it.

Is the TEA Party electoral poison?

Well, to answer the question, Rasmussen conducted a poll which stated 43 percent now see the TEA Party label as a negative. Of course they do, since the media constantly portrays the TEA Party as part of the problem and not part of the solution. I think the number around here who would agree with the 43% is only about half of that.

But the labeling trend is definitely not in the favor of those who believe in smaller, more limited government as independents dislike the TEA Party label by a 42-25 margin. Generally they are the ones who fall in the middle politically and supposedly it’s the great unwashed whose votes pile up on election day.

So here’s my message to the 43 percent: if you don’t buy the TEA Party and its message of limited government it’s only because you believe the lies told about the TEA Party by those who have a vested interest in keeping things just the way they are!

Do you want to know the way it is? We spend way too much money in government, and it’s money we create out of thin air. The question now isn’t if we’re heading into an inflationary era, but when and how much. It’s sort of like our experience with Hurricane Irene – some got a little wind, some got a little rain, but most had some sort of damage done to their towns and dwellings. All that differed was the degree.

So follow the money. If you didn’t get a raise last year or – worse – lost your job, well, what has the current big-spending government done for you? Maybe you’re getting some sort of transfer payment like unemployment benefits or food stamps but wouldn’t you really rather have the standard of living of being a productive full-time worker returned to you? As it stands you have less but government has more because they set the rules and print the money! Let my people go!

Continue reading “Is the TEA Party electoral poison?”

‘More,’ Fedzilla screamed, ‘more!!’

I thought I could let this go, but then this Washington Times story by Stephan Dinan begged to differ.

Now I realize that the situation over the last few months was akin to walking a tightrope, but to rack up a record $239 billion in debt in ONE DAY – almost 60% of the wiggle room gained by the Republican sellout – simply boggles the mind. Notice that the previous record deficit day came in 2009, after Barack Obama took office. So don’t blame it on Bush.

In fact, consider that in one day our deficit exceeded that of the entire final Bush budget submitted with a Republican Congress (fiscal year 2007) – $239 billion beats $161 billion in any sort of math, fuzzy or not.

And the public is skeptical too. Today a Rasmussen Poll was released and it showed just 22% of the public approved of the budget deal. Of course Republicans are dead-set against it (by about a 4-to-1 margin) but the poll also showed unaffiliated voters in with the same feelings toward the agreement. Only Democrats had a more favorable impression, with 34% favoring the package with 40% against.

The reason the public doesn’t like the agreement? They don’t trust Washington to cut spending.

Another interesting facet of Rasmussen’s summary is that, despite the frenetic coverage by the media, people had expected the outcome. Perhaps it’s a natural cynicism Americans have with their government. “You can’t fight City Hall,” they often say.

While the TEA Party has made great strides in fighting the excesses of government, its biggest problem is that we only control a small portion of government. Look at the strides certain states like Wisconsin and Ohio have made in curbing their governments – they managed to elect enough conservative legislators in both their legislative bodies to complement the reformist ideas of the governors elected – Scott Walker and John Kasich, respectively.

Both Walker and Kasich also have to overcome continued threats to their reform packages as several GOP state senators are subject to recall elections this month in Wisconsin and Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 – an act which severely curbed union influence in Ohio – goes before Buckeye State voters this fall. Don’t be surprised if unions aren’t looking to dump tens of millions into the campaign to overturn SB5.

So the TEA Party fight may be over for the time being in Washington, and those of us skeptical that Fedzilla could curb its spending appetite may be vindicated based on the one-day deficit record. But we have a lot of state capitals where the fight needs to be renewed.

Come this fall, the scene in Annapolis may rival the one back in March, but contenders will on the opposite sides. I’d love to see 10,000 TEA Party members outnumber 50 union thugs in demanding fiscal responsibility.

Coming around

In news that’s sure to cheer my API friend Jane Van Ryan up, and perhaps build even more clamor for the Keystone XL Pipeline (and thousands of jobs) being debated by the State Department and EPA, Rasmussen released a poll yesterday which states 75 percent of Americans feel we’re not doing enough to develop our own gas and oil resources.

While the Keystone example would promote exploration in both the U.S. and Canada (hence the State Department involvement,) there are plenty of places we can explore and extract in America, both on- and offshore. An April Rasmussen survey found 50% support for drilling in ANWR  (they didn’t ask me, so now it’s a majority of 50 percent plus one;) meanwhile, another April survey pegged support for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico at 59 percent. That’s in the wake of sob stories about the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Yet we still have people in the corridors of power who think mandating more fuel-efficient cars is the way to go. I say let the market decide on that one; of course, given this administration’s policy decisions which have led the way to $4 a gallon gasoline they may all but kill SUV demand anyway.

It never ceases to amaze me that the people who believe that certain technologies, created over the last century and constantly updated and perfected to make them even more cost-effective, are a horrible blight upon the earth. And then they turn around and support the methods those tried-and-true approaches supplanted – the sun only shines an average of 12 hours a day and is at a usable angle only a percentage of that time (not to mention the need for cloud-free days) while the wind has to blow just so to make a wind turbine useful.

About the only fossil fuel I’m aware of that, by reputation, is dogged by reliability issues is nuclear power. If we were getting our own supplies of oil, coal, and natural gas we wouldn’t have to worry nearly as much about strife in other parts of the world or bad weather in a particular region of the country. Are some people too dense to figure this simple truth out?

Now I don’t mind at all if the private sector is involved with alternative energy – after all, Perdue is placing about 13 acres’ worth of solar panels behind its Salisbury headquarters, paid for by a utility – but I have to question whether the utility really wants this electricity or is being forced to back this project by government mandate. If, because of the energy savings Perdue might enjoy, we save a nickel on a fryer that’s great; but the question is whether we lose that few pennies paying for mandated “renewable” energy from utilities when it’s far cheaper to create electricity from coal or natural gas.

(I just hope the glare from the panels doesn’t cause any more accidents in a busy area where changing lanes to follow U.S. 50 westbound is frequent.)

We know that someday there will come a time when fossil fuels run out and technology allows renewable energy to be more reliable. But we’re several generations away from that point, considering how much oil is in shale out west and natural gas is under the rocky western end of our fair state. Let’s go out and get it while we can, creating good jobs in the process.

America has a prosperous lifestyle to sustain, whether environmentalist wackos like it or not.