…not Mayor Belinda LaForce, who achieved 
48%, which was between17%-33% more than the two closest runners up. This poll was posted at the Arkansas Patriot, a very funny site that discusses local politics in Searcy, Arkansas in terms of a cosmic battle between elitist big government liberals and Joe the Plumber type folks. The blog owners constantly moans about the mayor and her extremist liberal policies, like collecting a small A&P tax which mostly affects visitors to the city, making local elections nonpartisan, and limiting the number of yard sales per year to eight*. They were evidently not pleased when Belinda LaForce came in first on their online poll. So they decided that she didn’t really win it.
In fact, one commenter went so far as to extrapolate:
it should be pointed out that the mayor did not receive a majority of the votes. Much like Blanche Lincoln , Vic Snyder, etc. anyone with a pulse is projected to beat them in a head to head election.
So, the take away from this 48-31-15-3-1 slaughter is that the 48% will lose because it wasn’t 51%? Not only that, but any of the others could easily beat the 48%.
There is so much craziness in that comment, it may take some time for it to sink in. The writer cites Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Vic Snyder (D-AR2) as further examples of this phenomenon. Senator Lincoln won 56-44 in 2004 and 55-42 in 1998. Vic Snyder won 77-23 in 2008; 61-39 in 2006; 58-42 in 2004; 93-7 in 2002; 57-43 in 2000; 58-42 in 1998; and 52-48 in 1996. No polling is available for the congressional race, but Senator Lincoln recently defeated the top two challengers in head to head polls, according to Zogby (41-39 and 45-29). It is unclear where the earlier prediction came from.
I read this blog in my spare time because it’s funny to see how people like that think. The primary writer for it is running for city council in Searcy, and appears quite likely to lose. That isn’t stopping him from covering the internet with frenetic tweets and blogs about the big-government liberals in the Searcy city government.
*The yard sale thing was really one of my all time favorites. The city council proposed limiting the number of yard sales for each resident to 8 per year. To most normal people, this appeared to be an effort to limit citizens from operating businesses through never-ending yard sales in their front yards in residential-zoned areas. Nobody wants to live next to those neighbors who always have junk out on their lawns. If they want to run a business, let them open one. To some observers, it appeared to be the end of yard sales in Searcy. The writer later wrote:
As predicted, the Searcy city council passed the yard sale ordinance on Tuesday night. This is a sad day for freedom in Searcy. If freedoms so basic, so essential as the right to enterprise can be stripped away at the whims of elitists, what else are we in danger of losing?
Too weird to comment on. Congratulations to the mayor for winning the ridiculous poll on the Arkansas Patriot.
Reminds of my Jerry’s line to George: “And you want to be my latex salesman…”
How can you help run a city when you can’t even run a meaningless online poll?
Naturally, when the AP loses his city council race next November, he’ll blame it on the public’s inability to see what a brilliant person he is.
Hey, keep me anonymous, but I know this poll was completely rigged. I made a bot to vote for Force over and over until she was ahead. Soon after this Kyle Reeves shot way past her, and then I fixed the numbers again. So, none of the numbers actually mean anything.
Look at the numbers (for LaForce and Reeves) and tell me that many people have voted on a poll on this particular blog.
Also, I had a comment on there with the name “The Associated Press” asking them to please stop using “the AP” to refer to their crap blog under the pretense of it having some sort of credibility.