Position B: All eligible candidates should get a fixed amount of money to spend on their campaigns to prevent influence buying.
Look out PACs and wealthy contributors. The people are ready to shut down influence buying. 66% support position B over 27% supporting position A. But what a difference gender makes on this one. 40% of Men support A while only 16% of women do. 80% of Women support B, while only 51% of men do. And 52% of Republicans support A. Fortunately between the 40% of Republicans who support B and the 87% of Democrats who support B, there is strong support. But that raises the question, how do we find candidates who will give up their PAC fix. Answer: There are already candidates out there who are refusing to take PAC money. They're the ones people here on dailykos attack for not raising enough money. They're also the only ones who can really clean up the election system, IMHO.
22. Would you support or oppose a law that would require local and national media to give free ad time to all qualifying candidates running for a particular office?
1. Support 2. Oppose 3. Other/not sure
This is one that you'll never see in a mainstream media poll. If you're going to limit funds and have the government pay them, the biggest expense is media time. Well, we the people own the airwaves and license them to the networks and local stations. Why shouldn't we, as a small price to pay to insure cleaner elections and healthier democracy, take some of that time for the election process. The people agree by 65% to 27%. That's based on 85% of Democrats, 50% of Republicans and 57% of independents.
23. Do you think we should keep the current electoral college system of electing a president, or do you believe that we should elect a president by popular vote?
1. Keep electoral college
2. Use popular vote
3. Other/not sure
I was surprised to see that this was a dead heat, 46% for keeping the electoral college and 47 for switching to the popular vote. Not surprisingly 74% of Republicans want to keep the electoral college-- hey, those red states get extra weight-- while 71% of Democrats want to switch to the popular vote. 64% of men want to keep the electoral college compared to 61% of women wanting to switch to the popular vote.
There's a lot of information that will help voting integrity activists. I'm sure the big voting machine companies already know the info. Companies use pollsters all the time. We progressives and the leaderless Democrats should be using polls much more often. Ironically, I received an email from Chris Bowers at MyDD.com that he and a group of bloggers had raised funds, commissioned a poll and were about to post their first results. We'd been working without knowing about each other's work. Chris's group's poll is a national poll. They get credit for doing the first national progressive's poll. OpEdNews gets credit for doing the first Progressive's poll, and Bob Fertik and David Swanson, of impeachPAC, afterdowningstreet and democrats.com get credit for doing the first progressive poll questions, piggy-backed on other polls.
Bottom line is, progressives, liberals and grassroots Democrats need to start using polls more. It is clear that the big media use polls to bolster the credibility of their echo-chamber spin. The polls make their claims, their hype and their attacks look more legitimate. The left must start coming to the table using the same power weapons. The senate Democrats should have been polling on the Alito question. They should have been asking question of all the demographic groups on all the issues he's proven to be an extremist on. Then, they could have gone into the hearings asking questions they knew would hit the right buttons, even with the right wing's base. I'm sure they didn't. It is bloody insane that these guys who all used polls to win elections didn't poll on the most important fight of the century since the elections.
So now, we have two polls, some poll questions... We need strong leaders to put it all together. They just may emerge out of the blogosphere.
Oh... I promised in my title some stats on Alito, and corruption too.
On Bush's spying without court approval,other pollsters seem to push for Bush's side, asking if people think it was okay for Bush to spy to make the country safer. I asked the question differently:
. Some have said that President Bush has violated the law and the Constitution with an illegal wiretapping operation against American citizens. They say that there is absolutely no reason the president had to wiretap without a court order when the law expressly allows the president to get a court order after the fact. The president says he is obligated to do everything in his power to protect the American people and this right is granted to him under the Constitution. Who are you more likely to agree with those who say that the president broke the law against wiretapping American citizens without a court order or the president who says the Constitution gives him the right to do whatever it takes to protect American citizens?
1. Those who say the president broke the law
2. The president
3. Neither/not sure
Panelists responded 51 to 42 percent that Bush broke the law. That breaks down to 88% of democrats, 11% of Republicans and 56% of independents. 100% of progressives and liberals say Bush broke the law. Here are some more demographics on groups saying Bush broke the law:
Armed forces families: 37%
NASCAR fans 22%
Weekly Walmart shoppers 32%
People who newer shop Walmart 82%
Whites 47%
African Americans 86%
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