Unity '08's Weird Survey

The forgotten Unity '08 movement, which sought to deliver us from this hell of polarized politics, released a poll they compiled of their 105,000 members (or, to put it in context, about a third the number of people who have given to Barack Obama). It's a group of disaffected "independents" who pine for a Mr. Smith kind of candidate. Since everyone hates Bush and the Dems haven't screwed up too badly, it turns out to be a bad year for this kind of movement. But that's another story. Anyway, they lumber forth, and the findings are worth a blog post, so here we go. For some reason, they sampled the returns randomly, rather than sorting and weighting or offering in toto. Dunno what it all means, but in the grist-for-the-mill department, a few thoughts.

They had respondents rate the major party candidates; they all clustered around the "fair" rating. On a 0-6 scale, Hillary scored the lowest, a 2.3; the rest of the leading candidates were clustered between 2.45 adn 2.52 (Giuliani, Romney, McCain, and Edwards), and Obama was about 2.9. To the extent anything can be said about this, it may be that partisanism, not ideology, is the dimension being measured. Among self-styled political agnostics, Obama comes up best. Food for thought when looking toward the general.

On a similar scale, the group was given seven statements about Iraq and asked to endorse or reject them. The highest-rated statement: "Iraq raises questions of future US military intervention."

There's more if you want it, but those are the salient points.