The first SurveyUSA poll post-M-word shows that this scandal is not done penetrating.
EDIT: Reversed the graphs. Duh!
One of the things that struck me very quickly was the age divide. The population that has heard of the scandal more is older, and less likely to find the remarks racist. The group that still has not heard of the scandal, the young, are more likely to find the remarks racist. We can infer a couple of conclusion, with varying degrees of strength:
1) The 40% who have not heard of the scandal yet are younger, and are more likely to find the remarks racist. Eventually, George Allen will find a majority against him.
2) The younger population is generally more likely to read blogs–this would make you think they were more likely to have heard of the scandal than the mainstream-media oriented older population–but this is apparently not the case.
3) The young who do read political blogs are more likely to determine the remarks racist.
4) Conversely, the older who are more MSM-reliant are less likely.
The young still, by and large, have not decided whether the remarks or racist or have not heard of the scandal. A substantial portion of the population is still available for spin, and with George Allen bungling this scandal in every way imaginable, it’s quite possible this could flip the election.
5 Comments
Kenton,
are the titles on the charts reversed?
not very clear. looks like the bottom chart goes with the title on top.
b
D’oh!
Kenton,
The age spread is disturbing to me… it implies that older people are less sensitive to racial trigger words and the damage they can do to civil discourse than I would have thought.
Was the source data limited to Virginians only?
In my own family, the older folks are wiser - and more sensitive to this sort of thing. So my experience lead me to expect the opposite of what I see here, but then my family is from the Northern Mid-West (Indiana/Michigan/Illinois) and New York.
It wasn’t a racist remark. At least a knowing one. Watch the video.
What you’re saying is that George Allen was just too stupid to know what words he was using.
I think he’s plenty smart.
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[...] With most young people finding George Allen racist, his poll numbers in that demographic have collapsed, a change of 40 (!) points in 2 months. [...]