The results from a statewide telephone poll conducted earlier this month by Winthrop University showed that of the eight 2010 gubernatorial candidates only Lt. Governor Andre Bauer was well known by nearly 50 percent of the people. Winthrop pollster Dr. Scott Huffmon says he was not surprised by the results because a majority of voters don’t get focused until about six weeks before an election. Huffmon is a Political Science professor at Winthrop. Huffman says a number of factors will affect voters in a number of campaigns moving toward November, not the least of which will be the continued bombardment of information and misinformation from the 24 hour news monsters and political talk shows on television, radio, and the Internet.

“There has been research that has shown that as people are bombarded with more and more information, that have to use a heuristic to figure out which information should I listen to and which information I shouldn’t. What they ten to do is taking pieces of information that agree with their world view and say, ” I’ll listen to this and ignore everything else,” so they tend to get reinforced only about their view of the world.” [Read more...]