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Can You Believe the Results, Shantel? Of Course Not…

Secretary of State Shantel Krebs is raising money for her U.S. House campaign with an e-mail spotlighting her 22-point lead over fellow Republican Dusty Johnson in an online survey conducted by my local paper. “Can you believe the results?” reads the subject line of her e-mail:

Images and text from Shantel Krebs for Congress campaign e-mail, modified slightly in font and image size, received 2017.03.28.
Images and text from Shantel Krebs for Congress campaign e-mail, modified slightly in font and image size, received 2017.03.28.

Of course you can’t believe it, because the poll isn’t just unofficial,” as the teeny-tiny print below Shantel’s pie says, but unscientific, as the Aberdeen American News points out in its March 18 report. We must assign to such casual online polls a margin of error at least the size of the broad side of Shantel’s horse barn. This open online poll had just 98 respondents… which makes me want to believe that thousands of AAN online readers are just waiting for a brave Democrat to declare her intentions to go to Washington and stand up to Trump!

I do like Shantel’s font perspective, making her name larger, emphasizing her big red Ms. Pac-Man gobbling up Dusty’s poor blue pie. The Aberdeen American News graphic is not quite as flashy:

Aberdeen American News, published 2017.03.18, screen cap 2017.03.28.
Aberdeen American News, published 2017.03.18, screen cap 2017.03.28.

But hey, AAN, whom are you calling snowflakes?

Expect no snowflakes at the Brown County Lincoln Day Dinner on Thursday, April 20, at the Dakota Event Center here in Aberdeen. Shantel will be here, as will her nemesis Dusty, who gets to emcee—lucky guy! The main speaking slots on April 20 go to gubernatorial candidates Marty Jackley and Kristi Noem… and maybe Matt Michels, if we can get him to make the decision he said would take him two months eleven months agoTickets are $40 a pop.

9 Comments

  1. Rorschach 2017-03-28 22:14

    The not-quite subliminal message is that Shantel is the Republican (red) in the race against Dusty and is gobbling up Dusty (blue) as Republicans do to Democrats in SD.

  2. Curt 2017-03-29 00:35

    Cory – I’ll cover the $40 for your 4/20 admission if necessary.

  3. Nick Nemec 2017-03-29 08:43

    Dusty is the emcee of the Brown County Lincoln Day Dinner? Have the Brown County Republican mucky mucks decided who is best for the local faithful?

  4. Nick Nemec 2017-03-29 08:45

    It’s an unanswerable question but I’ve always wondered how Lincoln would fit in with today’s Republican Party.

  5. LSC 2017-03-29 10:01

    I think pretty much everyone understands that online polls are not scientific. Even as such, this was a brilliant idea for Shantel. Dusty has been out on the trail raising money and gathering support for a few months now. Shantel obviously needs to do something to stop the runaway train and let Republicans know there is another viable candidate. This poll, unscientific as it is, shows some level of support which makes undecided feel like it is OK to support Shantel.

  6. Flipper 2017-03-30 00:34

    Brilliant? A Secretary of State who is supposedly bringing “honor” back to the office uses a totally unscientific and unreliable online poll as an attempt to raise money and to claim a “commanding” lead? She should be above this type of stunt. She must think most South Dakota voters are stupid. Then again, she’s probably right.

  7. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-03-30 06:36

    Online polls reflect some support, or at least some organizing capacity. Online polls are maybe more valuable before they are published as an opportunity for a candidate to mobilize her network for some minor action: “The Aberdeen paper is running a poll—go vote for me, and bring some friends!” She can use the unscientific nature of the poll to her advantage. (Remember—elections in general are unscientific polls; swamping an online poll is good practice.) After successfully swamping the poll, the candidate gets to gloat and thank her loyal, click-happy supporters.

    But consider that even on this score, Krebs doesn’t seem to have capitalized. 98 is a pretty meager turnout. She has over 2,300 Likes on her campaign FB page; I don’t know how many she had when AAN ran the poll a couple weeks ago, but with some added push on her personal FB page, which has nearly 5,000 Friends, she could easily have pushed hundreds of voters to the AAN poll (assuming the AAN poll isn’t behind its paywall).

    I would speculate there is a significant chance that Team Dusty will be watching for the next online poll to send out a quick action alert to its supporters to reverse the numbers, just to tweak Shantel.

  8. leslie 2017-04-01 21:22

    22-point lead? made up “facts”. welcome to the fantasy world of trump. in SD

    Gubernatorial candidates Marty Jackley and Kristi Noem have let voters down over and over, as did Daugaard, Rounds & Tidemann in the EB5 scandal, just like the national political hacks below.

    This is what happens when unethical representatives are unaccountably re-elected. For example, a presidential candidate, a lawyer, from NJ:

    Two former aides to Governor Chris Christie have been sentenced to prison for creating a colossal traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge for political revenge, a scandal that sank Mr Christie’s White House campaign.

    At the time of the traffic jams, Bridgett Kelly was Mr Christie’s deputy chief of staff and Bill Baroni was his appointee to the Port Authority, overseeing Mr Wildstein as deputy executive director (who testified against them).

    Sentencing Judge Wigenton said Baroni misled a state legislative committee when he said the traffic study was legitimate, and later misled the jury at his trial with the same contention. 
    “It was completely intended to wreak havoc,” she said. “It only served a punitive purpose. You clearly knew, and know today, that it was not” legitimate.”
     
    Assistant US Attorney Lee Cortes said that Baroni’s time as a state legislator, lawyer and school teacher gave him the experience and judgement to conduct himself ethically.
     
    “But when Bill Baroni was put to the test and made a choice, he chose to abuse his official power. And then he chose to lie about it,” Mr Cortes said, calling Baroni’s conduct “brazen, calculated, and a mean-spirited abuse of power” that had “real-life consequences on the people he was supposed to serve.”

    This is how long and to great expense Dems there were put to stopping Christie. He almost got away with it. 

    That IS pretty much how Rounds became senator, Jackley was re-elected, and SD republicans’ power base continues to expand. corruption. They so far have gotten away with it. USCIS has had to spank Daugaard for EB5. crickets in SD press.

    Daugaard “I hate that Medicaid expansion to provide health care for 55,000 resident and, tribes that should spend dollars on gramma, not Pe’ Sla,” is trying to get away with more as he tries to wrest SFC from us for another state park soon to be named in his legacy, at our expense–the fraud enabler. He’d rather permit EB5 and MCEC on his watch than let the truth come out and sink republican elections.

    “[B]razen, calculated, and a mean-spirited abuse of power” that had “real-life consequences on the people he was supposed to serve.” Baroni protected Christie’s presidential election bid. Perhaps he thought he could be another Steve Bannon. __________________.

    EB5 enabled MCEC. Government ‘investigation’ supplied mere fall-guys. A shell game. And in SD, republicans just repeat their parties machinations on the national level. ”

    …a judge willing to pretend that facts don’t exist—What Merrick Garland nomination? What dark money? What Senate blockade? What campaign rhetoric?—” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/the-fundamental-dishonesty-of-the-gorsuch-hearings/521097/

    Mitch McConnell now says ‘come hell or high water’ the senate is going to hear Gorsuch’s nomination. Next Thursday. Nuclear option (60 votes) or not. We Dems, and every other progressive or independant faction, must stop him. As far as I know Thune, Noem and Rounds stand with McConnell.

    Let’s see now, how much did Kochs say they spent on the 2016 election?

    $800 million.

    see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/nyregion/christie-bridgegate-baroni-bridget-anne-kelly.html

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