Stern v Bush

This is pretty interesting. I know I'm probably the last person on the planet to comment on this, but..Hey, it's all Comcast's fault.

One of my favorite places to mine stories - Knight-Ridder, is reporting some pretty astounding numbers for a pivotal group of voters.*

In this piece about one Mr. Howard Stern, K-R makes some pretty eye opening observations.

Stern, in his on-air call to "jihad" to defeat W, may wield the biggest stick in political talk-radio.

Michael Harrison tells us that "Howard Stern is the most influential political talk-show host in America today." Harrison is the editor of Talkers Magazine, which covers the talk-radio scene(I'll bet that's a real page turner).

I'll let Harrison, Simon Rosenberg(New Democrat Network), and K-R take it from here:

Stern's listeners are less interested in politics and more likely to be undecided, and thus are better prospects to be persuaded one way or the other, Harrison said.

"The Hannity/Limbaugh audience already knows where it's going," he said. "The Stern audience is fertile ground."

Stern's listeners are older and more affluent than some might think, having aged with the 50-year-old star. "It's a myth that young people listen to Stern," Harrison said. "He's an old guy to them. Their world is far raunchier, far edgier than anything Howard Stern does. They live in the world of the Internet, of porn sites."

It's not just Stern's listeners who could be swayed to vote against Bush. When Clear Channel pulled the plug on Stern, it took him off the air in two cities in Florida, leaving untold numbers of irate fans in a state where the last presidential election was decided by 537 votes.

Nationwide, 17 percent of likely voters listen to Stern's radio show, according to the poll released Thursday by the New Democrat Network, a Washington-based group. They favor Kerry over Bush by 53 percent to 43 percent, and by 59 to 37 percent in 18 battleground states.

Of the likely voters who listen to Stern, 1 out of 4 is a swing voter who hasn't decided how to vote in November. That means that about 4 percent of the national swing vote up for grabs this fall listens to Stern, according to the poll.

"You're now seeing a guy who has phenomenal reach of swing voters and a huge percentage of people who are going to be critical voters in the election spending all of his day every day going after the president," said Simon Rosenberg, the president of the New Democrat Network.

"Rush Limbaugh has met his match."

Stern's call to oust Bush is due almost entirely to his being blackballed by Clear Channel in the post-Janet Jackson breast exposure climate that has gripped 'Murrika. Stern's on-air use of 'obscenities' caused him to be dropped by broadcasting behemoth Clear Channel. Fear Clear Channel was allegedly worried about repercussions from the FCC, and dropped Stern rather than risk fines and possible license revocations.

This could prove to be very interesting.

*I'll never call a given block of voters the pivotal block. This is a most certain way to be proven wrong by the populace.