With the gubernatorial race a dead heat, both campaigns are getting a little testy. Over the past week, spokesmen for Townsend and Ehrlich have reacted with indignation and moral outrage to some tongue-in-cheek barbs launched by the other side.
To wit: On Monday, Townsend spokesman Peter Hamm expressed shock over a report in The Washington Post quoting Ehrlich's rendition of "Livin' la Vida Loca" with a Baltimore karaoke performer named Shawna.
"She'll make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain," sang Ehrlich, who then turned to the audience and asked: "We're not talking about Townsend, are we?"
Retorted Hamm: "A sitting U.S. congressman talking about his opponent asking him to take his clothes off? Come on. . . . His comments are not worthy of a bowling alley, let alone the governor's mansion. It's the definition of boorish."Ehrlich's people pointed out that despite his many years of public service, Townsend's supporters have been dismissing him in bars as a bimbo who's obsessed with her cock.
No, not really. Bad me. Bad.
Also in the area of
news you can use right before a neck and neck election: the former governor's girlfriend's ugly fountain on the grounds of the Governor's Mansion is going to go back on after the election no matter who wins.
As though this weren't bizarre enough editorial judgment from a newspaper which aspires to being thought a newspaper, the Washington Post also mixes apples and oranges and tries to sell the resulting
pulpy mess as mashed bananas:
Two separate surveys that relied on two very different sampling methods were used to produce the estimate of voter preferences in the Maryland governor's race reported in today's Washington Post.
In the end, the polls produced virtually identical estimates. So the findings were combined to produce the published results indicating that Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) and Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) each currently would receive 47 percent of the likely vote.
The two surveys were conducted to formally test different methods of locating and identifying likely voters. The first survey used a standard technique called Random Digit Dialing to find individuals to be interviewed. It involves calling a random sampling of telephone numbers generated by a computer and selecting a household member 18 years old or older to be interviewed.
The individual is then asked if he or she is registered to vote, as well as other questions about voting history and interest in the election. If the person was not registered to vote, the interview ended. One problem with this technique is that many people say they are registered to vote when, in fact, they are not.
The second survey, conducted under the supervision of political science professor Donald Green of Yale University and graduate student Christopher Mann, made use of a promising new technique called Registration-Based Sampling. Individuals were randomly selected from state voter lists, virtually eliminating the chance that someone who is not registered will end up in the sample.
The names and addresses of these voters were matched with computerized telephone directories to obtain their home telephone number. A disadvantage is that not all names can be matched to a telephone number. In this study, a successful match was obtained about two-thirds of the time.
The two candidates in the Random Digit Dialing sample survey each received 49 percent of the vote, with the remainder undecided. The registration-based survey found Townsend with 45 percent of the vote and Ehrlich with 44 percent. Combining the two estimates gave each candidate 47 percent of the likely vote, based on a total sample of 1,529 likely voters.So if I'm following this correctly, the smaller, more accurate sample showed that Townsend is ahead. The larger sample, in which we know that some of the respondents are inaccurately reporting their qualifications for the group we're attempting to survey (likely voters) shows that the two are neck and neck. Averaging the larger number of inaccurate results with the smaller number of accurate results puts the two in a dead heat.
Leaving aside the margin of error, which I assume has also been averaged out.
[
and so it has.
A total of 1,529 randomly selected likely voters were interviewed Oct. 20-24 for this survey. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.Oddly enough, the same article points out that Ehrlich benefits if turnout is suppressed.]
These people have no shame at all.
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