John McLaughlin On The Upcoming Elections

I was on a One Jerusalem conference call with John McLaughlin yesterday to discuss the upcoming elections. John is the CEO of McLaughlin & Associates, a company that specializes in public opinion research, media planning and buying services, and strategic consulting services. He has worked professionally as a strategic consultant and pollster for over twenty-five years.

John is one of the best practitioners of politics today. John's clients include Governor Schwarzenegger, The Republican National Committee, Congressman Peter King, Congressman Eric Cantor, Senator George Allen and many more. John drew upon this valuable experience to give us an overview of the conditions and emotions surrounding next week's elections, without the usual maintream media filter.

An audio recording of the conference call is available below the fold.

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Click here to listen to the Blogger Conference Call with John McLaughlin.

Other bloggers who participated on the call:

Anne Lieberman of Boker Tov Boulder & Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit.

John McLaughlin offered his insight on some of the details that cause political polls to be skewed toward one political party, ideology or particular demographic, and explained why these errors are prevalent in this round of pre-election news coverage.

He went as far as to suggest that some in the old media may be trying to intentionally drive down voter turn-out among Republicans by reporting that the races are not as close as the data indicates (evidence of that can be found here). He specifically referenced Dan Rather calling the state of Florida for the Democrats in 2000 as an example of just such soft suppression, explaining that voters in the central time zone panhandle believed that voting late in the day would be a moot exercise.

John declared that the Senate races in Montana, Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia will be pivotal in deciding if the Republicans will maintain control of the Senate. He also suggested that Republican Congressional candidates' messages will be far more instrumental in getting voters to the polls than their party's 72-hour GOTV program (there's more on that in #4 on this list).

John also offered his thoughts on the role that new media is beginning to play in relaying unfiltered news directly to voters, and referenced the very personal allegations that have been thrown at both George Allen and Jim Webb in their hard-fought Senate race in Virginia.

John McLaughlin put this election in the context of others in the past, and his commentary is definitely worth taking the time to listen to.