Battlegrounders
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IOWA: PRAVDA & KOOKY THEORY [David Hogberg 10/21 05:36 PM]

As best I can tell, the Des Moines Register op-ed page has not yet endorsed a candidate for president. However, guessing which way they will go is only slightly more difficult than it was predicting whom the New York Times would endorse. In fact, reading the DMR editorial one gets the sense that the capitol of Iowa is where the New York Times editorial page rejects go.

Known affectionately among right-leaning Iowa bloggers as “Pravda,” the DMR op-ed page does occasionally endorse Republicans. However, they have a habit of doing so only when it is pretty clear that the Republican will lose-such as Senate candidate Greg Ganske in 2002.

Overall, the DMR is a very liberal paper, sometimes offensively so-to see what I mean, go here.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten some Iowa stuff in this post, let me address Kane’s question, “Is there anybody who thinks this election will be over on November 2nd?” Well, I do. And here is my pet theory. I suspect the polls are misunderestimating the amount of support Bush is getting. My thinking here is that the left and much of the media (often indistinguishable these days) has spent so much time demonizing Bush these last few months, respondents may feel embarrassed to express support for Bush. Thus, they do not want to admit to pollsters (for fear of appearing stupid or mean to the pollster) that they plan on voting for the president. We know that a similar phenomenon can happen when one of the candidates in a race is a minority or a woman. Respondents will say they are voting for the minority/female candidate, when they really intend to vote for the white guy. If something like this is going on with the presidential race, then Bush’s margin of victory will be wide enough to ensure that there will be a lot of unemployed Democratic lawyers on November 3rd.