The opposition—struggling to come up with a reason why Rosales is polling between 20 and 30 percentage points behind Chavez—has resorted to colored pencils… After all, since Rosales isn’t winning the polls and since the opposition is presumably a majority, the only explanation can be fear of retribution.

The "Hannah Arendt Center" has released an incredibly dubious poll on the subject, under the very neutral name of a "survey without fear." Using the tried and true methods used in the run-up to the 1990 Nicaraguan elections, the center gave poll respondents one of three pencils: a red one with a Chavista slogan, a neutral one, or a blue one with a Rosales slogan. The fact that these pencils influenced the responses, we are told, shows the operation of fear in the election process.

One problem: it doesn’t show this at all, or at least the pollsters haven’t explained the subtle psychological assumptions underlying the study. What if, to the contrary, the red pencil simply serves as a reminder of the accomplishments of the Chavez government? And what if the blue one serves as a reminder of the accomplishments of Rosales in Zulia?

Second problem, even more hilarious: since the fact that people holding the red pencil are more likely to vote for Chavez, and that this is a result of fear, then why is the same not the case with the blue pencil, which allegedly has the same effect in favor of Rosales?

Again, La Hojilla shows us the truth: the head of this "Hannah Arendt Center" is a close ally of the head of Rosales’ campaign team. So much like the recent Penn & Schoen poll—which shows Chavez in the lead but uses certain inexplicable assumptions about how the undecideds will fall to declare a "technical tie"—the Hannah Arendt Center is engaged in little more than a political intervention, which serves both to bolster the confidence of the opposition voters and to discredit the eventual Chavez win.

All this might seem, to certain indoctrinated graduate students, quite far from the spirit of Arendt. I’m not so certain, and Voyou reminds us why…