Nets Bolster Accusers of Christine O'Donnell, Ignore Liberal Nature of Watchdog CREW

Nets Bolster Accusers of Christine O'Donnell, Ignore Liberal Nature of Watchdog CREW By: Brad Wilmouth Friday, December 31, 2010

As the broadcast network morning newscasts on Thursday each interviewed former Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell regarding allegations that she misused campaign money, in the setup piece on each network, the correspondent failed to inform viewers of credibility weaknesses on the part of O’Donnell’s accusers and omitted O’Donnell’s contention that she did not use campaign money to pay for rent on her home. Additionally, only CBS’s Jan Crawford informed viewers that the group pushing for an investigation - the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) - is a "left-leaning" group, as NBC’s Norah O’Donnell vaguely referred to a "watchdog group," and ABC’s Rob Nelson did not mention the organization.

Although both accusers who used to work for the O’Donnell campaign were fired - one after less than two weeks on the job - all three networks failed to inform viewers of these details that would suggest they might be disgruntled, snip

she asserted: "Here's where the miscommunication comes in. Because my home was vandalized and eggs thrown at my house, I paid the campaign, I paid the campaign money to use the townhouse as my legal residency. Not the campaign pays me. So they're taking it totally out of context, something innocent, they're trying to twist as negative in order to further this slanderous attack."

Rove doesn’t have that power. If Rove could’ve done something to result in fewer blacks voting overwhelmingly in favor of Coons, the result might’ve changed.

Christine won White Republicans 85-15
Coons won White Democrats 85-15
Christine won White Independents - fairly close
Coons won Non White Democrats 95-5
Christine won Whites overall.

22% of the voters of Delaware were Non White Democrats.

Victory assumptions for Christine included a “tidal wave” or “tsunami” turnout scenario. It didn’t happen in Delaware.

A tsunami turnout scenario in Delaware would not have 27% White Republicans (it would’ve been much higher).

A tsunami turnout scenario is Delaware would not have 22% non-white Democrats (it would’ve been much lower).

There was no tsunami or tidal wave in Delaware. Obama went in to Delaware at least once. He didn’t go everywhere. He did go to Delaware.

And according to the exit polls, 57% of the Delaware voters had a favorable opinion of Obama and 43% had an unfavorable opinion of him.

The voters of Delaware liked Obama, and did not want change.
And I don’t think that Karl Rove had much to do with that.
Tom Ross had more to do with turnout in Delaware than Karl Rove did. The DE GOP was not particularly helpful with GOTV.

According to the Delaware exit poll, 57% of the voters had a favorable opinion of Obama.

The voters liked Obama.

http://www.cbsnews.com/election2010/exit.shtml?state=DE&jurisdiction=0&race=S

Party by race Christopher Coons Christine O’Donnell
White Democrats (22%) 84% 14%
White Independents (22%) 44% 49%
White Republicans (27%) 14% 83%
Non-White Democrats (21%) 95% 5%
All other (7%) 58% 40%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president? Christopher Coons Christine O’Donnell
Approve (57%) 89% 10%
Disapprove (43%) 15% 81%

Oh, definitely. I’m Anti Rove and the rest of the neocons. Rove and them are not Conservative. They’re against Conservatives. They should go. I’m just saying that theres very little evidence of any type of Rove effect when looking at the exit polls.

In some of the earlier polls, SurveyUSA mid October for example, there did seem to be some possible problems bringing Republicans on board. In that poll, Christine was only getting 64% of Republicans. But in the exit poll, she ended up with 81%. 14% of the white Republicans voted for Coons. 14% of the White Democrats voted for Christine.

Conclusions can be drawn from looking at this old poll and the exit poll. The SurveyUSA poll predicted that 23% of the voters would be 65+. And that the 65+ would vote 52% Coons 33% O’Donnell. It turned out that only 17% of the voters were 65+, but they voted 55-44 for Christine. If the 65+ turnout was as predicted, Christine would’ve picked up a point or 2 right there.

SurveyUSA predicted black turnout at 15%. And predicted Coons with 79% of the blacks. Exit polls had black turnout at 22% and Coons with 93%. That difference is very substantial - 5 - 10 %. the fdu poll had blacks as 14% of total voters.

Christine did much better with whites than the polls indicated. She won whites by 6. Polls indicated that she’d lose whites by 14% - surveyusa. Black turnout was huge, and 93% voted for Coons. She won whites. The polls before the election were not telling that story at all. The polls before the election had her weak with whites, weak with Republicans, weak with Conservatives. And she was picking up black votes in the early polls, and blacks weren’t predicted to vote too much. Most polls got it completely wrong, except for the final number.

The 65+ actually did vote for Christine 55-45. The point I was making, I guess, is that the SurveyUSA poll was way off with the seniors. SurveyUSA thought they’d voted for Coons, but they voted for Christine. SurveyUSA thought 23% of the voters would be seniors, but it was only 17%. If it was 23% and not 17%, and if Christine had won the extra seniors by the same margins, the race would’ve been closer by a couple points.

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