Tom Ferguson and the Myth of the Median Voter

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Sep 29 14:02:43 PDT 1998


William S. Lear wrote:


>
>Tom had this to say when I asked him about a money shift being
>prompted by polls:
>
> As for the polls, there is certainly nothing the matter in theory with
> money following polls. But 1994 doesn't appear to be such a case. I
> arrived originally at my "Mt. Vesuvius" analogy by comparing the FEC
> reports for soft money and other funding for the first half of 1994
> with those for the rest of the year. (The first version of my piece on
> 1994 in the Nation that appeared right after the election relied on
> the data as published through October; the version in Golden Rule
> brought the data up through the complete election cycle.) That data
> makes it quite clear that the turn in money occurred by mid summer;
> the polls didn't start to move til the end in an amount that could
> possibly have justified such a shift. Indeed, many analysts didn't
> pick up the swing at all; that was why Gingrich's triumph surprised so
> many.

The folks at the Center for Responsive Politics said the money followed the polls. Short of having them compare sources at 10 paces, who knows?


>>>About his "endorsement" of Perot: this is news to me. Do you have a
>>>cite for where he did so?
>>
>>He did it at a forum sponsored by the Village Voice. I was pretty stunned.
>
>As to this, Tom replied:
>
> I cannot imagine what is meant by my endorsing Ross Perot in 1992 -- I
> never did any such thing. There is nothing in anything I wrote or
> spoke to justify such a silly claim; plus I'm not in the business of
> making presidential endorsements!

I checked with Michael Tomasky, who was on the panel too (and who correctly forecast Perot would drop out of the race). He remembered what I did, enthusiasm that bordered on endorsement. When I said I was stunned by it, Mike agreed. Maybe we both misunderstood. That's discourse for you.

Doug



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