TIME Magazine dips its toes into the 2008 Senate race scene in its list of the “top ten Senate races to watch“. (H/T: S2G) Here’s an excerpt from their Louisiana page, talking up the profile of state Treasurer and recently-converted Republican John N. Kennedy:
Kennedy very nearly beat Republican David Vitter for his Senate seat in 2004; in a year that favored Republicans (Bush won Louisiana with 57 % of the vote) Vitter just barely squeaked in with 51%.
Funny. That’s not how I remember the 2004 Senate race in Louisiana going down:
David Vitter (R): 51%
Chris John (D): 29%
John Kennedy (D): 15%
MoE: 0.0%
Yeah, Kennedy was really breathing down Vitter’s neck there.
That’s not the only mistake in the piece, of course. On the Colorado page, TIME calls Rep. Mark Udall (D) “the son of the legendary Colorado Congressman Mo Udall”. Mo, of course, represented Arizona in the House.
I feel genuinely sorry for anyone still stuck relying on the dead tree media for their horse race coverage.
besides the errors, is that it’s already out of date.
And I feel sorry for anyone relying on the dead tree media for ANYTHING!
…Kennedy could have been breathing down Vitter’s neck with those numbers was if Vitter were a brontosaurus.
Smart-assness aside, Time probably didn’t think about Louisiana’s free-for-all primary and saw Vitter’s 51% and thought that meant Kennedy got 49%
other people besides me noticed this one. I counted several different mistakes or perhaps examples of outright bias. I’m sorry, but Time is a joke.
The official Louisiana results….
15,097 1% Richard M. Fontanesi, O Defeated
12,463 1% R. A. “Skip” Galan, O Defeated
542,150 29% “Chris” John, D Defeated
275,821 15% John Kennedy, D Defeated
12,289 1% Sam Houston Melton, Jr., D Defeated
47,222 3% Arthur A. Morrell, D Defeated
943,014 51% David Vitter, R Elected
What a very long list of candidates….
The Republican got 943,014 votes
All the others..905,042 votes. which is 48.9% of all the votes cast.
Vetter did win with 51%, which he barely won, seeing there were so many candidates.
And the point of the sentence was that the GOP took the state with higher numbers than Vetter could muster.
The artilce seems to think Vetter should have done better, not that Kennedy had all the other votes.
If you think a sentence says something, re-read it to make sure; or you might beleive Saddam flew a plane into TOwer Two.
. . . about our senate prospects, I have noticed a lot of us becoming pessimistic about Maine, as if throwing in the towel simply because of the latest polls. I say, on the contrary, the polls should be a wake-up call for us to work harder, to keep our pessimism at bay and throw full effort in. Nothing is a foregone conclusion at this point, and if we all contribute time and, when possible, money, the Democrats can gain a very large number of seats this cycle. We CAN hold onto Louisiana, and we CAN take Maine. Nothing is for granted; we just have to work like hell.