Blankenship Surge

When I heard that Don Blankenship was surging in the polls, I thought, “What’s wrong with you people?” First Alabama with Judge Roy Moore and now Don Blankenship, the convicted CEO. Mr. Blankenship was CEO of coal company Massey Energy Company when there was a mine explosion killing 29 miners. I believe he was indicted for knowingly violating mine safety regulations and spent a year in jail. And last week he ran for Senate as a Republican.

When I heard about the surge, I couldn’t believe people would vote for a man who knowingly short circuited the mining safety procedures that eventually caused death. Even relatives of the miners who died said that they were going to vote for him. What an upside down world we are living in!

If he was willing to ignore miners’ safety so he could make a little more money, what makes you think that he will look out for you as a Senator?

On Tuesday night during the primary run, there was even a news segment where the newsperson was saying that he was getting indications that Don Blankenship was edging out two other Republican contenders. What!?! What insanity is this!?!

By the end of the night, Don Blankenship came in third. Whew, the world is back to normal.

So what happened? Why were we getting indications that Blankenship was surging? It turns out that everybody was talking about internal polls which I think are polls taken by the campaign rather than independent third parties. Internal polls should be regarded as suspect because campaigns will most likely just publish polls that are favorable to their candidate whereas an independent pollster doesn’t care one way or the other.

So when reading about poll results or looking at data, one should consider the source, the quality and the methodology used before relying on them.  Next time, I’ll just listen to Nate Silver.