1 post tagged “primary”

The media's coverage of primaries is just horrible.

First they tell have this big countdown timer on the screen to tell us when the poll closes.  As if thats important, because when the polls close, no one knows anything.  All you have is questions asked of people as they leave, and nothing is making those people tell the truth about how they voted.  If someone asked me I'd lie and tell them to go fuck themselves because "Exit Polls" are the biggest waste of our time right after wondering if Obama scratching his face on the ABC debate was his subtle way of giving Clinton the finger.

Then they get the first batch of results in.  How many votes in the first batch?  Twenty five hundred.  2500.  Approximatly 0% of Pennsylvania has reported in.  Hillary was winning 67% to 33% at 2500 votes.  Twenty five hundred votes reported and this is "breaking news."  Twenty five hundred votes mean nothing.  You can't call a winner, you can't even tell if someone stands a good chance of winning.  I could get 2500 students to vote for Jesus this fall as a gag, is anyone going to report this as breaking news and say "Jesus currently in the lead, but its too early to tell, way too early to tell,"?

They get the second batch of results in.  Now they're at three percent of all of Pennsylvania, with Hillary at 55% and Obama at 45%.  A little better, thats enough to make a "breaking news" headline, but what do those sensationalizing bastards do?  With three percent (3%) of the vote in, they call a winner.  "BREAKING NEWS:  HILLARY PROJECTED AS WINNER!"  You know what you can do with 3% of the vote in?  You can say "Three percent of the vote is in."  End of story.  Calling a winner with three percent of the vote in is the equivalent of me looking at a few square inches of skin on the untouched backside of a burn victim and determing that the person is in perfect health.  I don't care that Hillary had been polling well, we know that doesn't matter, just ask John Kerry.

Now they've gotten like the sixth batch of results in, they're at 13% of the districts reporting, and I am laughing.  Hillary stands at 52% and Obama at 48%.  Apparently someone realized that "Hey, this race is closer than we thought, lets not project a winner this early and be wrong later," because they took down the "Breaking News:  Hillary Projected as Winner!"  banner. 

Personally, as long as its a close race, I'm happy.  Obama is in the lead right now, and even if the rest of the race is split 50-50 in who gets what, Obama still comes out on top, which is what I want.