I see that Bearing Drift has now taken this poll down (see my screenshot, appropriately placed on the far right of this post – ha), with minimal comment or fanfare by the Drifters (although their spin is quite amusing: “94% of our readers want someone not named Obama to be president.”). I mean, on one level I can certainly understand why they wouldn’t want to make a big deal out of this, as it’s additional evidence of the fact that conservatives, and Republicans generally, are not at all enthused about their presidential nominee this year (in the poll, Romney got 17% 19% of the vote, compared to 72% 68% for Gary Johnson, 5% 6% for Barack Obama, and 3% 4% for Virgil Goode). UPDATE: The final poll results were slightly different than the one I took a screen shot of. See the “flip” for the final one.]
Sure, Republicans and Tea Partiers are enthused about NOT voting for the socialist/Kenyan/Muslim/blahblahblah Obama, but they are not – based on many scientific polls and anecdotal information, including this Bearing Drift internet poll – in the least excited about the father of “Romneycare,” the guy who just a few years ago was a fairly progressive governor of Massachusetts – pushing for clean energy and action on anthropogenic global warming, saying that coal plants “kill people,” significantly raised “revenues” (aka, “taxes”), stated that “All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual orientation,” signed a permanent state ban on assault weapons (saying “Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts. These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.”), was pro-choice (said “as governor of the commonwealth, I will protect a woman’s right to choose under the laws of the country and the commonwealth. That’s the same position I’ve had for many years”), strongly supported embryonic stem cell research, etc, etc. Go figure.
By the way, imagine if our poll on who you’ll be voting for on November 6th had Barack Obama in second place? Fortunately, we don’t have that problem; as you can see, our poll has Obama with 88% of the vote, compared to 6% for Willard, 3% for Gary Johnson, and 1% each for Virgil Goode and Jill Stein. Obviously, Obama’s not going win 88% of the vote in Virginia, but Nate Silver’s Five Thirty Eight model DOES have Obama with a 72.1% chance of winning Virginia, and a 76.9% chance of winning the election (note: it’s 95.4% in the “now cast,” which is different than the official Nov. 6 forecast by Nate Silver). I’ll take it!
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