Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


FOCUS GROUP HELL….I confess that I’ve always been sort of weirdly fascinated with Joe Klein’s periodic reports on Frank Luntz’s focus groups. I can’t really say why, since I don’t have any idea whether the data they produce is at all reliable, but the fascination persists. Today, Klein reports that Luntz’s latest batch of independents was deeply unimpressed with prospective vice president Sarah Palin:

Only one person said Palin made him more likely to vote for McCain; about half the 25-member group raised their hands when asked if Palin made them less likely to vote for McCain. They had a negative impression of Palin by a 2-1 margin…a fact that was reinforced when they were given hand-dials and asked to react to Palin’s speech at her first appearance with McCain on Friday — the dials remained totally neutral as Palin went through her heart-warming(?) biography, and only blipped upwards when she said she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere — which wasn’t quite the truth, as we now know.

Klein also reports that far from neutralizing McCain’s age issue, his choice of Palin actually intensifies it — something I anticipated months ago when people were talking up the even younger Bobby Jindal as a potential running mate. Luntz apparently thinks this debacle can be salvaged with a good convention speech, but I think Klein’s take is the more clear-eyed one: “They really saw this pick as a gimmick — and one that reflected badly on John McCain’s judgment.”

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate