| Survey USA released a poll on Wednesday determining early reactions to this season's new Dancing With the Stars celebrity contestants. The poll, conducted on Wednesday, asked viewers which female star was their favorite, and which male or female star they thought would be voted off. Not surprisingly, 44% responded that they thought Tom DeLay would be sent home.
No such luck, but let's look at the results and crosstabs and see what they can tell us about DeLay and the only electorate he's got left.
Survey USA Poll: Which male dancer do you think will be going home tonight? (Lists names.)
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DeLay wasn't voted off, but an overwhelming 44% of respondents thought he would be. Out of the eight participants, Mr. "Wild Thing" still managed to rack up almost half of the votes against him. Pretty impressive numbers. But then, it was an impressively bad turn on the dance floor.
Crosstabs show strong dislike for DeLay amongst all age groups. However, there is some discrepancy amongst various racial groups. Respondents who self-identify as White dislike DeLay 2-1 over those who self-identify as Black or Hispanics, whereas 89% of folks who are "Other" expected DeLay to go home. Most excitingly, the expectation that DeLay would be sent home was almost uniform in the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West regions of the US, at 44%. DeLay clearly has no Southern Strategy to overcome the fact that he's got no skills.
There are several factors that might account for the strong response in the poll that DeLay would be sent home.
- DeLay has high name ID from his years in Congress, particularly his very public resignation and indictment. Viewers have no idea who most of those other "stars" actually are.
- There's a backlash against the excessive media coverage of DeLay, most of which seems ignorant of all the bad stuff he did while in Congress.
- People actually remember DeLay as a menance to American society from his time on Capitol Hill, and hope that he loses first.
However, I think it's potentially even easier than that to deduce why folks expect DeLay to be booted off the show, and it's not for political reasons: He's simply a terrible dancer and deserves to lose on the merits. His utter lack of skill is compounded by air guitar, booty shaking, jazz hands, lack of rhythm, and animal prints.
He's as bad at dancing as he was at crafting legislation that would actually help the American people, rather than just his lobbyists buddies. He's as bad at dancing as he was at not breaking campaign finance laws and laundering money. Heck, he's as bad at dancing as the voters of TX-22 were at writing in "Shelley Sekula Gibbs."
But what about the votes? Despite overwhelming expectations amongst viewers that DeLay would be sent home, he wasn't. Maybe it was the email blast sent out from his daughter to his email list, encouraging folks to vote for the indicted former majority leader. DeLay's daughter also reminded folks that per the rules of the show, folks can vote eight times in favor of a chosen contestant. I guess whipping the votes to successfully support something harmful to America runs in the family.
In any case, DeLay will be Hammering on our eyeballs again early next week, which means he gets another chance in front of the voting public to get the results he deserves. |
