Three dumb polls

I don’t really want to blog them all but the rule of three requires it.

Let’s dispense with the stupidest one right now. It doesn’t require comment, I don’t think. Moving right along.

Pew has a new study probing the political consciousness of what it calls “the DotNet generation,” which is their headline-grabbing way of describing adults 18 to 29. I’ll call them “young adults.” The most interesting number: although voter registration among young adults is at least ten points lower than any other group, and although they “always vote” only 24% of the time, they scored twelve points higher than the rest of the population when it came to trying to persuade people whom to vote for in 2004. Fifty-six percent of them copped to that, while only 49% actually turned out to vote. What the hell happened to that seven percent? Too jaded from Bush’s lies to actually go down there and pull the lever or what?

I can’t quite figure this out, either:

Everything makes sense until 50. We begin idealistically, reality intrudes, we settle down and start voting our wallets — but where does that blue Matterhorn in the fifties come from? I could understand it happening at 60 when you’re inducted into AARP, but according to the graph the number of Democrats actually declines a bit at that age.

Hmmm. The peak comes at 56. People who are 56 now were born in 1950, which would have made them 18 in … 1968. So I guess that’s the explanation. They came of age, turned hippie, protested the war and never looked back. Super.

The study ends with an issue-by-issue breakdown of young-adult opinion. Note the numbers on abortion, corporations, and privatizing social security. What would the nutroots say?

Finally, from Quinnipiac, who’s the worst president since WWII? Who else?

The religious divide is interesting, but this is a party-line vote, of course:

First, let me express my embarrassment at the fact that more Republicans voted for Clinton here than for the comprehensive failure that was Jimmy Carter. Granted, both men were miserable on terrorism, but at least Clinton managed to keep the prime rate under 20%. Second, let me express my even more profound embarrasment at the fact that all of two percent of Democrats chose Carter. Can that possibly be right? Only one out of every fifty Democrats will cop to the fact that Jimmy Carter was the worst president since World War II? Do the Camp David accords mean that much to the other 49? What bit of nostalgia from the halcyon days of 1978 are they holding on to here?

Third, note that more Republicans were willing to call Bush the worst than Democrats were willing to call Reagan the worst. I was a kid during Reagan’s presidency but still politically astute enough to recall him being roundly derided as a militaristic imbecile who would surely get us all killed soon enough — a generational criticism of Republican presidents, as it turns out. So what explains the restrospective respect for Reagan among lefties? The end of the Cold War, of course, but surely there’s also an element of BDS at play: as much as they might loathe Reagan, it’s an article of faith that the sheer awfulness of Bush cannot be approached by any leader this side of Germany circa 1938. Reagan was bad, but he’s not Hitler.

As a parting shot, check out the parity among both parties calling Nixon the worst ever. I’d love to know what those numbers would look like in an alternate universe where Nixon was a Democrat. 18-15 the other way, you think?

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