When it comes to this election, there may be something going on that the polls do not capture.
I conducted a poll of my own this weekend and the results were shocking (at least to me.) Now I will grant you that my polling sample was small. It was comprised of me and five guys I grew up with playing golf in upstate NY this past weekend.
Now I have known these guys all my life and we have discussed politics over the years. They know what I am like and what I think and they usually do not bring up the subject unless they a) want to get my goat or b) have me agree with something they think. I can assure you that 99% of the previous conversations have fallen into the a) category. This weekend was all about the b).
Now my childhood friends are not terribly political and not very conservative. They are generally typical Long Island guys who are fairly purplish. I know that more than one of them voted for Obama.
So it was that it was surprising to me that with the exception of one dyed-in-the-wool union guy, they all let me know in one way or another that they were voting against Obama. Not voting for Romney, voting against Obama.
In particular, three of my golfing buddies actually went out of their way to tell me that they believed that if Obama won a second term, the country as we know it is over. Over.
Now, like I said, these are not conservative political animals like me, but purplish New York voters, one of whom I think even voted for Obama four years ago. They went out of their way to tell me that they think Obama could end the country as we know it if he is re-elected.
I must admit that that I was shocked by this. I wasn’t shocked that a few of them would vote either for Romney or against Obama, but I was shocked by there astute assessment that if Obama wins, that’s the endgame.
One of them (the suspected Obama voter)told me in no uncertain terms how much he dislikes Romney, even repeating some Obama talking points, but that Obama had to be stopped.
Of course, my golfing buddies does not a great polling sample make. But I think it is entirely possible that this type of sentiment is even more pervasive than we might assume among regular Joe’s, even those who bought the Obama hype the last time.
PT Barnum famously said you can’t fool all the people all the time, my golfing buddies are no longer fooled and they know what is at stake.
