Rise of the Paulistas

News out of Iowa is not Mike Huckabee getting out the evangelical vote over Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama getting out the younger vote over Hillary Clinton -- despite one poor prediction to the contrary. No, the big result in last night's Iowa caucuses was something else.

Ron Paul got 10% of the Republican vote.

Paul has been consistently polling in the 1-3% range. When combined with the typical poll sampling errors of 5-6%, this means that his support was statistically consistent with minus 2%. The polls missed all those Paulistas out there, even though their presence was there for all to see in Paul's runaway fundraising. Paul got nearly triple the number of votes of Rudy Giuliani.

I had all but written off the libertarian wing of the Republican party in the last decade after Pat Buchanan showed poorer and poorer -- and even bolted (for a time). But now we know that 10% of the Republican vote goes for an unflinching philosophy of libertarianism -- including non-interventionism and opposition to the Iraq War.

The Paulista troop surge was tactically successful on the ground in Iowa. His good showing, along with such a heavily split field, shows why the Democrats will have two active candidates into March and the Republicans at least three heading into summer.

New Poll on Low Voter Turnout in Election

I've posted a new poll on the Brighton Centered Blog:

"What do you think was the biggest reason for the low voter turnout in the November 6th election?"

To see the poll, you must load the blog's full website in a browser and look at the upper-right-hand-side. Voting ends Thursday night at midnight.

From Anonymous Attack Mailings to Online Ballot Box Stuffing

There's a poll running in the upper-right-hand corner of Brighton Centered about whether or not John Connolly, candidate for Boston City Councilor-At-Large, should apologize for sending anonymous mailings attacking opponent Councilor Stephen Murphy.

The results have been neck-and-neck for the last 24 hours between "Yes," "No," and "I don't care" (politics as usual), with "Yes" ahead by a small margin.

That is, until now.

As of a couple of hours ago, one of my browsers has a snapshot of the interim results. I just looked at them a minute ago... and somebody has been voting like mad with "I don't care" answers.

	Few Hours Ago	Currently	Difference
Yes, he should also apologize for it	17	20	+3
No, admitting his campaign was involved was enough.	14	18	+4
I don't care -- this is just the way politics works.	13	39	+26
Who's John Connolly?	5	7	+2

I've highlighted in bold-face the statistically implausible increase in votes.

Ummmm... anyone care to guess who's behind this ballot box stuffing? And why does he want to make it look like people online "don't care"? You would think whomever is behind it has better things to do -- like making phone calls to get out your vote -- than scheming to vote multiple times on some two-bit blog's poll.

Post comments below with your guesses as to who is behind it. Please no profanity or offensive statements.


EDIT: and in the few minutes since I put up this post, he keeps adding more votes to the "I don't care" column. Methinks "Mr. I don't care" is named Pierre (copyright Maurice Sendak):

New Poll: Should Connolly Apologize?

I've put up a new poll on the Brighton Centered Blog:

John Connolly's campaign admitted to sending anonymous mailings attacking opponent Stephen Murphy, but offered no apology. Should Connolly also apologize for the mailings?

The background story on the anonymous mailings can be found here.

For readers of this blog who use the RSS feed, you will have to load the full webpage of the Brighton Centered Blog to see the poll (e.g., in a browser).  The poll is on the top-right of the webpage.

Poll: Do Students Make Boston a Better Place to Live?

An online poll that is a bit reductionist asks: "[Does] the high student population in Boston make the city a better or worse place to live?" Click here to vote.

New Poll: What is the most important issue facing Allston-Brighton?

I've put up a new poll on Brighton Centered asking the question:

What is the most important issue facing Allston-Brighton during this election cycle?

The question is located at the top of the right-hand sidebar on Brighton Centered. People who read this blog using an application (Google Reader, aggregator, etc.) will have to load the full website in a web browser in order to see the poll and vote.

City Council Candidates Forum Poll Removed

There were a number of reports during the last two days of "get-out-the-vote" drives: requests to vote on the candidates forum poll I put up a couple of days ago.

I estimated a bit under 100 people attending the forum, while the A-B TAB put the number at 75. There are always some people who don't do email, others who don't do the internet, many who haven't ever heard of a blog, others who think Brighton Centered is a pile of dog doodoo to be avoided at all costs, etc. So you can't expect all those attendees to make it to the blog to vote.

When the number of voters today (105) exceeded the number of people in attendance at the event, it was clear that the poll results have been manipulated. The results are meaningless and clearly not representative of the public's feeling on who did well in the forum. I notified the campaigns not to use the results in any literature, by the way... and other media should be similarly warned.

We'll chalk this one up to a bad experience.

Maybe we can expect 75,000 votes to be cast in Allston-Brighton in the September 25 election? It would be interesting, because the neighborhood only boasts 70,000 residents (and far fewer registered voters). I'm all for the Chicago method of getting out the graveyard vote!

New Poll: Who Did the Best at the City Council Candidates Forum?

I've put a poll up through 7/31 to give readers a chance to vote for who they thought did best at the Allston-Brighton District City Council candidates forum on 7/23.

Look at the top of the sidebar on the right.

For those who read Brighton Centered through an aggregator / RSS reader: you have to load the full webpage first to see the sidebar.

Note that you can vote for more than one candidate -- but you may only vote once. Ballot box stuffing is discouraged (for those who think they are clever).