Is Leftism A Mental Pathology?

Since they cannot accept the clear evidence that Bush won the election this past November, these folks must either be intellectually defective or psychologically unstable. Consider these fine examples.

"I think they stole Ohio," contended Darrell Anderson. "I think Kerry should have won," the Marylander added. "I think he did win. I think he absolutely won. I think he got enough electoral votes to win, counting Ohio." Anderson believes that the Republican party rigged voting machines in the Buckeye state. "I think the exit polls were correct. They were outside the margin of error. I don't care what they say, it falls outside the mathematical possibility that there would have been a six-point swing — Kerry being six points ahead to a three-point win for Bush, it's outside mathematical possibility."

Donning a shirt labeling President Bush an "international terrorist," Michael Bedoian traveled to the International A.N.S.W.E.R-organized rally from Seattle. He offered, "I'm not convinced that [Bush] won the election. My personal opinion of these people is that they have absolutely no regard for human life or the democratic process."
"I think that there was voter suppression, primarily in Ohio," a San Franciscan opined. "If it were an honest election, I would say that Bush would have lost." Fellow Californian Neal Weiner said, "There seems to be a controversy in Ohio and Florida, which was pretty much covered up with the help of John Kerry." Weiner believes that "we don’t know who the right president is, because what happened in Ohio was never properly investigated."

Others are more strident in their belief in an Election Day fix. Holding a modified American flag reading "One Nation, Under Fraud," Stephanie Kornfeld said, "I believe that the Republican party has consistently used fraud to get into office and to stay in office." Traveling to the D.C. rally from suburban Boston, Kornfeld rejected the idea that Bush won the 2004 presidential election. "I honestly don't believe that. I don’t believe those numbers are accurate," she maintained. "I think Kerry did win, because the exit polls would verify that."

Uh, folks – exit polls are known to be notoriously unreliable in close races. Even the best fall within the standard deviation only about 95% of the time, meaning it is possible to get a wildly mistaken result around 5% of the time. And that is only if one presumes the sample was not biased in some way or another – something that the pollsters’ own report says was not the case. So since the numbers from the polls are unreliable, so is the perception of the world spoken of by the protesters above. And without the exit polls, their little theory falls apart, especially since the results of the election on November 2 match up well with the results of virtually every other poll taken in the waning days of the campaign.

So which is it, Leftists? Did we get an erroneous outcome on exit polls that even the pollsters call flawed, or an even more improbable SIMULTANEOUS FAILURE OF MULTIPLE UNRELATED POLLS occur in the days leading up to the election using much more controlled random samples? Only someone with low intelligence or subject to severe distortions of reality could select the second option.