He’s Down! No, He’s Up! We Don’t Know!

ABC News has a new poll, among those who say they’re “certain” to vote, showing Schwarzenegger with a comfortable lead, 45-29. [*] The Iowa market is taking the new numbers seriously; Schwarzenegger is now favored over Bustamante, though the vote-share market shows them about even.

Update Mickey Kaus points out that the poll in question is a “robo-poll,” which of course would naturally favor the Terminator. He also reads between the lines that ABC’s own director of polling is backing away from the result. Perhaps due to Kaus’s comment, IEM has now gone back to even money.

Footnote Mickey has also been hinting recently that the LA Times was sitting on some sort of Arnold-related dirt. Presumably that would be distrinct from the Oui interview [*], which Mickey refers to as the “Schwarzengangbanger issue,” or the Gigi Goyette business [*], which is actually pretty disgusting if true, as Goyette now says it is. (That affair reportedly started when Goyette was 16, which is two years below the statutory age in California, and when Schwarzenegger was already married.) My bet is that all of this stays below the radar screen.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com