Jack Germond speaks to Hood College about past election results

Germond
By Meghan Burket

            The news media failed to project the outcome of the most recent election by predicting the race was closer than it was Jack Germond said.
Jack Germond, a political analyst, spoke to the students and faculty of Hood College about the misleading predictions of the campaign in the media. Germond said that the media covered the spectacle of the campaign but had no sources of their own to confirm information.
Jack Germond, 84, is an American political journalist and pundit. He has worked for the Washington Star and the Baltimore Sun. Germond said today’s reporters are just as talented as the reporters of his generation.  Although, journalists could get to know people better and learn new techniques to get information, Germond said.
Germond said the public was misled by the media’s projection of the election. “In fact the race was never that close; they had it all wrong,” Germond said. The public statistics were meaningless to professionals because the numbers get distorted by state preferences, Germond said. For example, the numbers could be coming from a state such as, Kentucky or a state such as, California.
Moreover, Germond said the newspapers did a good job of covering battleground states but newspapers cannot match the viewership of television. “Television is not the same because it can’t deal with the nuances of an election like it should,” Germond said.

Germond posed a question to his audience asking which candidate a person would rather have at their dinner table. Germond said those types of questions needed far more attention in the polls because it is a good signal of who will be elected.
Germond stressed the importance of thinking critically about polling data. “Most Americans have no idea what they are talking about when answering those questions,” Germond said.
Germond said Mitt Romney was a weak candidate and continued to say, “Nobody was sticking their neck out for Romney.”  Germond said Romney did not have support from a majority of women, intellectuals, African Americans, and Latinos.
Moreover, Romney was on the wrong side of immigration issues, women, and young people, Germond said. Republicans need to look at the world through clearer eyes if they want to win the next election, Germond said.
Republicans have capable people, but they are not the majority, Germond said. Republicans are known to have the mentality of trying to “beat” the Democratic Party which is not enticing to young people, Germond said.
Germond said that if Republicans put distance between themselves and the tea party that would be in their favor.
On the other hand, Germond said that Obama actually had a comfortable margin to win throughout the campaign. Obama took a majority of the battleground states Germond said.
Germond said he believed Obama would have to deal with the nation’s debt in his upcoming four years as president. “Obama faced a lot of potholes in his first term, and he has handled them all, some issues better than others,” Germond said.
Germond discussed a key weakness of the Democratic Party. The Democrats will need a white candidate in the future if they want to continue to win the popular vote because there is still racism in this country, Germond said.
After Germond spoke, Katherine Orloff, a communications professor at Hood College said, “I thought the election was pretty close but the polls and the news media gave Romney a lot of time. I also saw more TV spots for Romney than Obama.”
Germond discussed different preferences in types of media coverage. Courtney Carter, a retired English professor at Hood College discussed her media preferences while she tracked the election. “I read the Washington Post and watched MSNBC, I did not use the internet often because it was reinforcing information I had already read,” Carter said.