My vote for the Tin Man

This week's New Yorker is an all-politics issue, so I am in Heaven on my daily commute to and from work. There is an article in it about John Zogby. You may remember last week I wrote here about a question in a recent Zogby poll. For whom would you vote, the Tin Man or the Scarecrow, in an election for the President of Oz?

Several weeks ago, I signed up to take the Zogby on-line polls, and since then I've taken a poll about once a week. This was the first time I had encountered the Oz question, but apparently the question has been asked before, particularly in 2000 about two weeks before the election. Detailing the results of that question, Zogby says:

The next day, I called Utica and said, "Whaddaya got?" They said "Well, we've got Gore—," I said, "I don't care about Gore. What's Oz?" It was 46.2 for the Tin Man and 46.2 for the Scarecrow. It was right there that I knew I wasn't going to know what was going to happen. But I asked this question again two weeks ago and the Tin Man led by ten points.

Obviously, Zogby has asked the question even more recently, since the New Yorker article wasn't written between last week and this week. I wonder what the poll is saying now? Tin Man or Scarecrow?

I suppose it all depends on whether one believes the Tin Man is Kerry and the Scarecrow is Bush, or vice versa. What I found last week, writing about the matter, is that when I really thought about it, the candidates could be either one of the characters. Kerry could be perceived as hollow, or stuffed with straw, and Bush could be seen as stubborn, stiff, oxidized into a belief system that is leading America down the wrong Yellow Brick Road. Perhaps the question is flawed in that respect, since it relies on the assumptions of the person hearing the question. My first assumption is that Kerry is the Tin Man. Maybe others would not come to that same assumption.

Why am I writing about this again? I think the Oz question is a clever question, and apparently Zogby feels so as well, or he wouldn't be trotting it out again this year. Apparently, it predicted the debacle of 2000 pretty accurately. In an interview with a Singapore newspaper, reprinted on the Zogby website, Zogby talks about the Tin Man/Scarecrow contest, and explains why he thinks it predicts a Kerry win on November 2nd. The fact that Zogby admits he wants Kerry to win may give credence to critics who say his polling is biased against President Bush. However,as this election draws to a close, it seems increasingly clear that none of the pollsters are in any better position to provide an unadulterated answer to how the election will come out.

Today, the majority of polls have Bush pulling ahead. Whether as a result of the Bush campaign's capitalization on Kerry's "Mary Cheney" remark, or as a result of the debates generally, no one seems to know. Kerry's comment about the Cheney daughter certainly did provoke widespread negative opinion for Kerry. It mystifies me a little, because supposedly we live in a society where there is no shame in being a homosexual, yet Kerry's mention of a lesbian by name in the debate has resulted in people saying they "cringed" or otherwise felt uncomfortable. The comment passed right by me even as Kerry said it, so again, I am left shaking my head about this controversy. I just don't understand it, except as an effort by the Bush campaign to take advantage of whatever they can in these final days. And Kerry did throw them a lifeline, no doubt; problem is, I don't think he could have foreseen that his comment would be utilized by the GOP in such a way.

A letter to the editor of the New Yorker makes an analogy between Kerry's remark and a hypothetical comment by President Bush on one of the Kerry daughters having an abortion. Again, the premise underlying that analogy is that lesbianism is something shameful or morally frowned upon, like having an abortion. Indeed lesbianism may be frowned upon in some segments of our society, but not the segment I think Kerry wants to appeal to. The segment most likely to be negatively influenced by knowing that Dick Cheney has a gay daughter would not vote for Kerry anyway, and probably will go ahead and vote for President Bush (if they vote at all). Maybe I can't see past my own indifference to homosexuality, which prevents me from understanding why some people would be offended by the mention of someone being a lesbian. But the comment did not seem to me to be anything to get bent out of shape about. In hindsight, it was a political mistake, but could Kerry have foreseen that? And should he be blamed for not foreseeing how provincial people still are on the subject of homosexuality?

To return for a conclusion on the issue of polls, I don't know that any poll taken right now should make either candidate feel good. I'm not just saying that because my candidate is down in the polls. If you look at each one of them, there is a wide and inexplicable gap between CNN, which has Bush up by eight!!! points and Time and a couple others, which have a difference of just two points between the candidates. Is there truth in some kind of median, or average of the polls? I doubt it. For example, if the CNN poll is somehow fatally flawed, averaging the polls or looking for a median won't compensate for that. In some ways, the question of for whom would you vote, Tin Man or Scarecrow, may indeed be just as revealing a question as for whom will you vote, Bush or Kerry?