New Hampshire Reps. Shea-Porter and Hodes Approval Rating
Today while watching WMUR they showed us a poll of New Hampshire Representatives Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes. The anchor woman said, before they showed the numbers, New Hampshire voters weighed in on the favourability of our two congressmen, and New Hampshire approves of them. I waited with bated breath for the numbers to show me how much we approved of them now knowing we thought highly of them.
And then they showed the numbers:
Shea-Porter- 39% favorable
Hodes- 34% favorable
So how do they justify saying these are good favorability ratings?
Because only 18% and 21% of people surveyed had a negative rating respectively for them. This, they say gives them a “+” rating. They ignore the fact that almost half the people surveyed either had a neutral opinion or said they didn’t know enough about them to give an opinion. How good of a job can they be doing when half the people don’t even know what they are doing?
An interesting twist to this is that Jeb Bradley, who Shea-Porter beat for the seat, has a higher rating than either of the two current representatives. He sits at 41%, and will be running to take his seat back next year.
I do fear that this does represent a total lack of knowledge by New Hampshire voters as to what our state and federal elected officials have been up to. I have been thinking that New Hampshire would correct the mistake it made last year, but the people seem oblivious to the issues at hand. I fear yet another Iraq war protest vote next year that will turn us even farther to the left. Something I thought would never happen until I read an article in the New Hampshire Union Leader this morning. I have held out hope that New Hampshire would realize what has happened to our state and vote for change.
The majority of New Hampshire voters are undeclared. When you are undeclared you can vote in either the Democrat or Republican primary, well according to an article in the Union Leader today 66% of undeclared voters will vote in the Democrat primary, in the 2000 primary 62% of undeclared voters voted in the Republican primary. This seems to be a major shift in the voting block and it appears to be mostly in opposition to president Bush.
This is why I fear we will go much farther left in the next election. People are still so upset about the war that the same people who voted straight ticket last year and yanked our state into the Massachusetts realm of the country appear poised to do it once again. They don’t even realize they are doing it as can be seen by the large amount in the congress survey who didn’t even have an opinion of, or know enough about the congressman of their district, THAT THEY VOTED FOR, to say whether they approved of the job being done by them.
The optimist in me still holds out hope that the reason many of them will vote in the Democrat primary is to vote against a candidate, and not for one. Maybe they will vote to keep someone off the Democrat ticket and then voter Republican in the general election. I know it’s a longshot, but it’s all I have at this point.
We also hade polls today that showed how Senator Sununu is doing against his known Democrat challengers and possible challenges. I watched and waited to finally see what our governor’s approval rating was, as this would probably tell me more about where our state is going in the next election. They didn’t mention it. It has to be out there. I want to know what it is. Why are they hiding it? I think I know that they aren’t showing it because it is down, but I can’t be sure.
Until I see the governor’s approval rating I have a glimmer of hope. If it comes in high, the New Hampshire I love is probably gone forever. I will still hold on to that glimmer of hope even as it appears to be fading into the sunset.
America's Watchtower 
I noticed that you consistently mis-state the name of the opposing party (e.g. the Democrat Primary and Democrat challengers) in your article. Is this intentional? There is no record of a “democrat” primary or party in the state of New Hampshire. If you google the terms, you get a reply asking, “did you mean Democratic primary/party?” Is this an error on your part or an intentional effort to deride the opposition? I’ve even heard the president use this term, as well. What do you think the mis-use of the party’s actual name will accomplish for Republicans?
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Yes, it’s intentional. It’s also petty and stupid, and accomplishes nothing. But I still do it anyways, I don’t know why. But I’m not the only one.
From mediamatters.com:
In recent months, media figures, including news reporters at CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and the Associated Press echoed Republicans by employing the word “Democrat” as an adjective to describe things or people of, or relating to, the Democratic Party — including referring to the “Democrat” Party itself, even though that is not the party’s name. The ungrammatical conversion of the noun “Democrat” to an adjective was the brainchild of Republican partisans, presumably an attempt to deny the opposing party the claim to being “democratic” — or in the words of New Yorker magazine senior editor Hendrik Hertzberg, “to deny the enemy the positive connotations of its chosen appellation.” In the early 1990s, apparently due largely to the urging of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the use of the word “Democrat” as an adjective became near-universal among Republicans.
Hertzberg pointed out in an article for the August 7 issue of The New Yorker that the word “Democrat” is a noun, arguing that its use as an adjective defies the rules of English grammar:
The American Heritage College Dictionary, for example, defines the noun “Democratic Party” as “One of the two major US political parties, owing its origin to a split in the Democratic-Republican Party under Andrew Jackson in 1828.” (It defines “Democrat n” as “A Democratic Party member” and “Democratic adj” as “Of, relating to, or characteristic of the Democratic Party,” but gives no definition for — indeed, makes no mention of — “Democrat Party n” or “Democrat adj”.) Other dictionaries, and reference works generally, appear to be unanimous on these points.
Hertzberg noted that Republicans “as far back as the Harding Administration” have referred to the “Democrat Party,” including late Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), who “made it a regular part of his arsenal of insults,” and former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS), who “denounced ‘Democrat wars’ … in his [1976] Vice-Presidential debate with [former Sen.] Walter Mondale [D-MN].”
Further, Hertzberg wrote that “among those of the Republican persuasion,” the use of ” ‘Democrat Party’ is now nearly universal” thanks to “Newt Gingrich, the nominal author of the notorious 1990 memo ‘Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,’ and his Contract with America pollster, Frank Luntz.” While Hertzberg noted that Luntz “road-tested the adjectival use of ‘Democrat’ with a focus group in 2001” and “concluded that the only people who really dislike it are highly partisan adherents of the … Democratic Party,” he also wrote that Luntz had told him recently that “[t]hose two letters [‘ic’] actually do matter,” and that Luntz “recently finished writing a book … entitled ‘Words That Work.’ ”
Notwithstanding its partisan pedigree and grammatical awkwardness, a Media Matters for America review* of the Nexis database for the last three months found a number of examples of media figures, including news reporters, using the word “Democrat” as an adjective. For instance, on the August 13 broadcast of CBS’ Face the Nation, guest host and CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley used “Democrat” as an adjective four times, referring to both the “Democrat Party” and the “Democrat primary,” during an interview with Connecticut Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont.
Note the line:
Further, Hertzberg wrote that “among those of the Republican persuasion,” the use of ” ‘Democrat Party’ is now nearly universal”
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