Facets of the Presidential Election - Polls and Such

I'm pretty sure I was as passionate about the Gore v. Bush contest as I am about this election, but this time around, I've been more interested in reading related information. Last time, I paid attention to policies, but not as much to how an election gets won, how it gets covered, how it gets perceived.

So, this time around, the blogosphere has provided me some excellent reading material. My recent favorite is fivethirtyeight.com. It's another Google blog.

Its focus is on polling. Most days, it has the most recent polls, and analysis on how items in the news affect the polls, or how the polls are affecting coverage of the election. I can't read it every day -- there's too much detail, and my days are just too busy. But most days I can read some of the information and get educated. Politics is complicated. Presidential politics even more so.

One of the recent topics was not on polling, but instead about yard signs, and how they are hated by people working in the campaigns. It's a good read.

I remain dismayed by the polls. The way this country is going lately, I think meaningful change is required. I think the GoP policies (still more like "trickle-down" than "laissez faire" no matter what they say) have been given a fair shot and have proven ineffective for the current times. I also think that a "smaller government" may sound good, but when the private sector seems in such dire need of oversight, and two of the major issues the next president needs to deal with are going to require careful policy work with many parties (health/retirement for boomers & energy) I think I'd rather have leaders who want to attack the problem, rather than let the "free market" deal with it.