September 10, 2012

It Sure Looks Like Obama is Getting a Convention Bounce

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I was planning to be a good boy and avoid all discussion of convention bounces until at least the middle of the week, but I’ve decided to cave in. Is this irresponsible? Sure. But what good is a blog if you can’t be irresponsible once in a while?

Anyway, apparently all the tracking polls are suggesting that Obama got a convention bounce, and this morning Sam Wang posted his latest campaign meta-analysis, the first that incorporates post-DNC polls. (I’ve added the labels in red, so don’t blame Sam for that stuff. It’s just my interpretation.) It looks to me like Romney did indeed get an anti-bounce from his convention. I put Obama’s baseline at 300 EV before the convention and 309 EV after the convention. That’s an anti-bounce of -9 EV for Romney. Conversely, Obama has jumped from 309 before the DNC to 320 as of Monday morning. By the end of the week the dust should have cleared and we’ll have a better idea of whether this holds up and what the new baseline is. But early returns sure suggest that the RNC was a bust and the DNC was a hit. Either that or the press corps and the electorate are finally waking up to just how comically deceptive and calculatedly nebulous the Romney/Ryan campaign is. I guess it could be either one.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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