John Oxendine tweeted this morning at 11:14am that he was ‘Honored to be in lead of GMA Poll’.
The problem is, I got an email that I’m putting at the bottom of this post at 10:22am and which has already been put up on his own site. In it, Ox put the results of this poll – but he put the results out of numeric order for the Republicans, leaving them in order for the Democrats.
The reason for this rearrangement? The Republican side of the poll shows UNDECIDED as leading with 31%, with Ox coming in at second with 25%.
So John Oxendine clearly doesn’t understand elemetary school math that 31 is greater than 25.
AND John Oxendine has NO qualms about lying to us if he can manipulate something to his advantage in a headline.
Therefore, John Oxendine is an ignorant liar.
Oxendine Leads Republican Candidates in Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) Membership Poll
As it does each year, GMA conducted a survey of both elected and appointed city officials a few weeks before its Annual Convention. The survey was successfully emailed to 2,099 mayors, council members, managers and clerks. GMA received 528 usable responses for a response rate of 25.15%.
The results are as follows:
If held today, who do you think would win the 2010 Republican primary for Governor?
John Oxendine 25.4%
Nathan Deal 18.2%
Karen Handel 12.9%
Eric Johnson 8.9%
Austin Scott 1.3%
Other 1.3%
Ray McBerry 0.4%
Undecided 31.6%
If held today, who do you think would win the 2010 Democratic primary for Governor?
Roy Barnes 44.1%
Don’t Know 20.7%
Thurbert Baker 16.1%
David Poythress 10.9%
Dubose Porter 7.5%
“It is an honor to receive this support from Georgia’s municipal leadership. I am committed to our local government leaders. My Administration will work as an equal partner with Georgia’s counties and cities on behalf of the people we all serve,” said Oxendine.
“I appreciate the hard work our municipal leaders do on behalf of Georgia. Day in and day out they make decisions that impact real Georgia families and businesses. They do so with a sense of professionalism and pride which makes Georgia a better place for all of us,” said Oxendine.
“I look forward to continuing to earn the trust and support of the members of the Georgia Municipal Association,” said Oxendine.
John Oxendine
Governor 2010
Haven’t we had enough of ignorant, lying politicians?
Well, in all fairness, many would argue that he is leading the poll since “undecided” isn’t a candidate. He does lead all Republican candidates. It’s semantics, but I can see where he could say that without it truly being a lie.
However, he is most definitely guilty of not understanding the poll. The question is “Who do you think will win”, not “Who do you want to win”. All it means is that people think Oxendine will be the Republican nominee, not that anyone in the group actually wants him there. In political polling, the phrasing of a question often takes weeks of intense thought and discussion to get the questions right. The question doesn’t mean what Oxendine thinks it means.
I agree with Tom and his assessment that it is all about semantics. Perhaps the Ox should have put that he was the leader in “decided” voters.
Ignorant liar is a bit strong. Ignorant implies that he didn’t know any better. He lied about something that he knew nothing about? Besides, wasn’t it you that said enough with the name calling? (Just picking at you, dude.)
The email subject and tweet both said ‘leads the poll’, which is a LIE. On the GOP side, ‘undecided’ leads the poll, and overall Roy Barnes does.
I’ll grant that the email text and website both said ‘leads Republican candidates’, but even this is misleading, since truly the leader among Republican Candidates is STILL ‘undecided’.
Ignorant is backed up by the fact that apparently Mr. Oxendine forgot 2nd grade math that 31 > 25.
Both fit according to the facts and definitions of the words, and therefore the names are appropriate.
I’ve got no problems with name calling when the facts back it up. Baseless namecalling such as some of the comments we get on other topics will not be tolerated.
Hey! I thought we couldn’t call people names on here anymore.
Oxendine is a great choice for the Republicans …. Perdue took his blue light away & that was his only weakness ….
Actually, I think that Oxendine is a horrible choice for Republicans. He’s a big government, big spend kind of guy with little regard to the free market or local government. It doesn’t sound very Republican to me.
[...] when John Oxendine uses such a headline when in fact ‘undecided’ led the poll, there was no ‘undecided’ option in [...]