Toronto This is so weird and bizarre it’s frightening and unsettling, but in the release of a poll yesterday 1 out of every 5 Americans still believe that ACORN is likely to “steal” the midterm elections this coming November!
I can’t make up stuff this crazy, so here’s the full report from Public Policy Polling:
ACORN may not exist anymore but 20% of Americans still think (or at least say they think) it will steal the election to keep Democrats in control of Congress this fall.
That does represent a decrease from last fall in ACORN’s perceived ability to steal an election. In November we found 26% of people thought the organization had stolen the 2008 Presidential contest for Barack Obama.
What’s interesting is that there’s been a significant reduction in concern in Republican ranks about ACORN’s influence. While 52% of Republicans said they thought it had been responsible for Obama’s victory, just 23% of them think it will bail the Democrats out this fall.
That 23% of Republicans who think ACORN will be influential this time is actually barely higher than the 20% of Democrats who say they think it will keep their party in charge. Perhaps Democratic voters have come to the conclusion that ACORN is their last best hope. Or more likely they gave a silly answer to a silly question. And we’re not going to apologize for asking the occasional silly question.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about all this is that only 40% of voters definitively say they think ACORN will not steal the election with another 40% saying they’re not sure. I guess a lot of folks are just waiting to see if ACORN’s really gone away or if it’s just hiding in the bushes waiting for people to get complacent before it makes its move.
Your theories would be much appreciated.
If that’s not enough for you I’ll also share a posting from the Minnesota Independent which quotes another set of comments in Slate extrapolating the extreme conclusions.
Poll: One in five Americans thinks defunct ACORN will steal next election
By Andrew Restuccia 9/14/10 4:08 PM
Public Policy Polling has proven, once again, that one in five Americans will signal their belief for just about anything. The group’s poll today notes that 20% of Americans think that ACORN will steal the election for Democrats, and 40% aren’t sure. (The other 40% are pretty sure this won’t be the case). All this, despite that fact that ACORN is now a defunct organization.
But this is not simply a laughing matter, notes Dave Weigel at Slate:
More seriously, we’re about to go into the first election since 2004 where the Democrats won’t do very well. It is also the first election since the 1970s when ACORN won’t really exist. In 2004, 2006 and 2008, when things were either touch-and-go or terrible for Republicans, voters read lots of election-time stories about an organization called ACORN that was filing lots of bogus voter registrations. This year, Republicans will win, and I bet the myth of ACORN only grows — that a stubborn number of Americans will think that Democrats only won the 2006 and 2008 elections because of fraud, and that James O’Keefe saved us from it.