Politics:

It strikes me now that the issue of polling is a strange one. The Gallup/CNN/USA Today polls have consistently oversampled Republicans, despite there not being a bias towards Republicans in the actual voter turnout in the last several elections. So I wonder, why would someone do that? What do they have to gain? If a knowledgeable person looks at the breakdown, it’s quite clear that because of Gallup’s bizarre breakdown, even though they show Bush’s numbers going up, they’re actually going down per person sampled.

So… to what end, I asked myself. And the only reasonable response I can come up with is this:

The reason that polls like Gallup are oversampling Republicans is to sway public opinion. Now, that much of it is obvious. But there’s a more sinister side to that. If Bush consistently polls as “the winner” until election day, it becomes much harder for the public perception to accept a Kerry win in a close call. Bush, having been “winning” until election, should by default, win in a close race – the public mentality will have been formed to be biased towards accepting the status quo.

Because the perception is that Bush “should” have won, the close race pushing in his favor will be easier. This is why polls with a three point Kerry lead are “tied,” and why a one point Bush lead have “Bush Leading.” This coverage has been almost completely uniform across CNN, and many other major news outlets. This is *so* subversive, and apparently simplistic, that it completely seeps into the public’s subconscious. Bush *should* win, according to the polls. He’s had a lead, and Kerry, at best, has tied him. The incumbent rule, where an incumbent less than 50% is in serious trouble, hasn’t been brought up almost at all by the same press.

Leaves you to wonder why. But I don’t really wonder anymore about why. I wonder about *how*. How is it that the media is being so uniformly manipulated like this? It’s really Orwellian NewSpeak, in many ways…