Emily, '16, Yeah!

Feel like I've neglected the US stuff lately, but frankly, short of the daily stories of white cop shoots black or brown guy for looking at him the wrong way, or decades-long neglect of infrastructure and/or complete disregard for the environment & human safety leads to completely needless disaster, most of the political stories in the US consist of trying to make a remotely reasonable spin on the latest bullshit to fall out of a Republican candidate's mouth.

So hey, here's this, only a few days old, and only slightly indicative of how fucked up the Supreme Court's decision on campaign-finance was that turned a run for president into a financial and promotional no-brainer for any semi-conscious Republican wanting easy easy money and free publicity.

Emily Farris Is Not Running for President

Pollsters included the name of a random woman in a survey—and 20 percent of Republican primary voters said they dislike her.

Pity Emily Farris. Republican primary voters just don’t like her very much.

In a survey released on Wednesday, Public Policy Polling found that Farris near the bottom of the GOP field. She polled well behind fellow Texans Rick Perry and Ted Cruz. Just 3 percent of voters had formed a favorable opinion of her, while 20 percent reported unfavorable views. Only embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie faced a wider gap.

And Farris isn’t even running. She’s a political science professor at Texas Christian University, whose name was included within the enormous field of Republican hopefuls as a statistical control. “It’s a little surreal to think that 20 percent of Republican primary voters have a negative opinion of you, when they most likely don’t know you,” she told me.

Farris’s unlikely journey from scholar to subject of political polling began with a PPP poll of Iowa voters, in April, that included Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. Paul Egan, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, called up PPP director Tom Jensen to make sense of the results. Snyder, Jensen told him, was effectively unknown. “If I had polled you for favorability with Iowa Republicans, you would come out with the same number he did,” Jensen said.

He put that proposition to the test in PPP’s next poll, of Arizona Republicans. It turned out that Jensen had been mistaken. Snyder was viewed favorably by 5 percent of respondents; Egan, the reporter, actually outpolled him with 6 percent support.

Farris, who teaches an upper-level class on polling, was puzzled by the inclusion of an unfamiliar name. PPP explained its logic. “Well, next time throw my name in the poll as someone with no national profile,” she tweeted to PPP. “It'll amuse my Survey Research students.” And then, on Thursday, she spotted reporters trying to figure out why a quarter of Republican voters had opinions about “Emily Farris,” when they’d never heard of her.

Yep, there are so many B-list and C-list candidates on the clown-car-train for the Republican nomination in 2016 that voters don't even know who the hell they are any more, but will express an opinion anyway, even for a completely random made-up candidate.  I'll joke: Sure gives ya faith in democracy, huh ?...  But seriously, I do wonder whether the results would be the same if repeated with Democratic voters.*

Thanks Chief Justice** Roberts !


*No, really, I am completely serious as in whether this has anything to do with the ability or lack thereof to admit ignorance or failure, that seems to characterise certain types of political leadership, and how that might be reflected in the electorate.  Isn't funny, because it isn't meant to be.  And I'm genuinely interested.

**Thanks Harriet Miers !