Sexta, 12 de novembro, 2004

   It's the war, stupid!

John Hood, Presidente da John Locke Foundation, disseca no seu artigo para a Reason as diferenças entre as pesquisas de boca de urna de 2000 e 2004, e mostra que se realmente houve um assunto em particular que ajudou Bush foi a política internacional. Segundo ele:

"In 2000, only 12 percent said that "foreign affairs" was the most important issue in the presidential race, and they broke 54 percent to 40 percent for Bush over Gore. In 2004, a combined 34 percent identified foreign policy (either Iraq or the war on terrorism) as the most important, and they appear to have broken for Bush by 59 percent to 40 percent. Put it all together, and the increase in salience and small increase in Bush preference for foreign policy constitutes a gain of 13.5 percentage points in the Bush vote in 2004."

É bom lembrar que a pesquisa de boca de urna é o único fato que teoricamente suporta o argumento do tal "voto religioso/moral". Todas as pesquisas durante a campanha apontavam para o Iraque como fator decisivo, e não é atoa que Kerry passou suas duas últimas semanas batendo no assunto.

Pior ainda, essa pesquisa de boca de urna de 2004 foi muito mal formulada. Como explica Charles Krauthammer:

"The way the question was set up, moral values was sure to be ranked disproportionately high. Why? Because it was a multiple-choice question and moral values cover a group of issues, while all the other choices were individual issues. Chop up the alternatives finely enough, and moral values is sure to get a bare plurality over the others.

Look at the choices: education 4%, taxes 5%, health care 8%, Iraq 15%, terrorism 19%, economy and jobs, 20%, moral values 22%. "Moral values" encompasses abortion, gay marriage, Hollywood's influence, the general coarsening of the culture and, for some, the morality of pre-emptive war.

The way to logically pit this class of issues against the others would be to pit it against other classes: "war issues" or "foreign policy issues" and "economic issues."

If you pit group against group, moral values comes in dead last: war issues at 34%, economic issues at 33% and moral values at 22%."

Quer dizer, os dados estão ai para serem analisados. Se alguem achar algo que prove o contrário, por favor me mande.

Mas não usem os 'tradutores' do UOL. Please.