Dems twisting figures: This was splashed all over Common Dreams last week from Democrat Celinda Lake's group, again, twisting the numbers around to make Nader look bad: ["Nader Voters Favor Kerry Over Bush by 3-to-1 Margin"]. Of course, nowhere in the press release does it mention that this polling firm is a partisan Democratic strategy firm. Note from their Web site:

"Lake Snell Perry & Associates principals are among the Democratic Party's leading strategists ... LSPA is led by its president, Celinda Lake ..."

As all politicos know, Lake is a long-time Democratic Party strategist, who along with Stanley Greenberg, has worked on almost every Democratic presidential campaign in the last two decades. A Google of her name often labels her "a Democratic pollster." So, of course a pro-Democrat Party group is going to do anything they can to make Nader look bad just like all the other thugs out there attacking Nader. Also, look at the specifics:

"The survey was conducted in Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, West Virginia, for The Nation Institute, a public foundation dedicated to an independent, free press. ... The survey was conducted October 17-19 of 500 registered voters (including 300 Nader voters and 200 who like Nader but are undecided or weak Kerry supporters). It has a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percent."

So, they interviewed 500 voters in seven states. That's like 71 voters per state! You can't determine what people think with only 71 interviews in each of those states!
However, let's look at the exit polling data from 2000 for some more thorough results.
First, in Florida, Nader took equally from both sides: 1 percent of the Republican vote and 1 percent of the Democrat vote. In New Hampshire, Nader earned twice as many Republican votes as Democrat votes: 2 to 1. In other states, Nader took equally from both parties or even more from Republicans despite the refusal of partisans to accept these facts.
In 2004 polls, as I have noted here numerous times, Nader is taking votes from Republicans everywhere. As noted by Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, on CNN recently, the USA Today/CNN/Gallup national poll has shown Nader taking more votes from Bush than Kerry consistently. Winger specifically mentioned the fact that both Kerry and Bush support more illegal immigration and many conservatives with nowhere else to turn, are turning to Nader. Yet, at the same time, no one is saying a thing about poll after poll showing the hoards of Democrats who are voting for Bush.

One of the things I hate about Common Dreams is that they post these press releases and don't allow anyone to challenge the "facts" in the press releases. The best anyone can do is just do what I did here, which is to point out that Celinda Lake is a Democratic partisan and the way partisans have been acting towards Nader, her opinion or the data she reveals, cannot be trusted.