It’s about time for a little humor to be interjected back to the blog so we’d like to open this posting with a joke:

Two friends are walking in the jungle. Suddenly a tiger appears in the distance running towards them. One friend pulls a pair of running shoes out of his bag and quickly puts them on. With a surprised look, the other friend says, “You don’t really think you can out-run that tiger with those, do you?”

“I don’t need to out-run the tiger,” his friend replies, “I just need to run faster than you.”

Now on to the posting:

One of the most popular statistics to quote in the Los Angeles Times has been Schwarzenegger’s sagging popularity. It is hard to open the paper without reading about it. (For example here and here both from 8/31).

Independent Sources asked our friend Moon to look into what this portends particularly in regards to other like situations.  Noting the fact that the state legislature’s popularity is even worse. 

After reminding us that some people don’t like to read a whole lot, Moon wrote this:

“It doesn’t mean much of anything.”

To understand why, let’s look at how a similar situation turned out:

The above graphic represents Bush’s popularity polls from the day he took office until pretty much now.  He’s a good example because I don’t think any other president has ridden a wilder popularity ride.  Bush took office to negative polls.  Due to unfortunate events, his popularity soared to record highs.  By re-election, he had squandered 40+ points and was once again riding in the negative zone.  Entire “concerned” groups organized in order to save the country from this horribly unpopular President.  Then an odd thing happened.  The President that came into office with negative polls and had negative polls election day, won.  There was all kinds of speculation that the people that voted for the unpopular President were retarded, spent too much time at race tracks, smoked too much, were too fat, etc..  But, what it all boiled down to was one simple fact: the guy running against him was more unpopular than the unpopular President.  That one simple fact over-ruled all other demographics and polls.

So, comparing Arnie’s popularity to any indirect comparison is moot.  No matter how unpopular Arnie is now, all he has to do to hold on to his seat is be less unpopular than his opponent for one day. With Villaraigosa declining to run (evidently he hasn’t yet done everything that he set out to do in Los Angeles, and the two “leading” contenders for the Democrats aren’t exactly setting the world on fire: Phil Angelides, the state treasurer, and Steve Westly, the state controller, this race is wide open.

Some of the other names being thrown around at least according to SF Chronicle (and remember this is their list not ours):

Gray Davis

Gavin Newsom

Dianne Feinstein

Leon Panetta

Steve Jobs

Loretta Sanchez

Rob Reiner

John Garamendi

Jerry Brown

Since it is likely that none of these people will run or fit the bill for various reasons, Moon’s logic holds particularly true. Why Arnold may not be breaking popularity records…Westly? Angelides?

Update: As I write this the gay marriage issue has popped back up and on the Governor’s desk. This is a highly political issue in California where the majority recently voted against gay marriage but the Legislature passed a bill approving it. Analysis here.

technorati: schwarzenegger Special Election 2005 steve westly Angelides

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 9:00 am by Insider and is filed under California Schemin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.