In most all things, I try to follow Hanlon’s (or Heinlein’s) Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
This is particularly important to remember when looking at polls.Sometimes, however, one must wonder.
As I pointed out yesterday, the result of Romney’s “really bad week” was that Romney had gone from 5 or 6 points behind in Gallup, to essentially tied. Even so, a number of people have noted that there are some odd assumptions in that poll, and others. Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen talked about it recently. Asked if the polls were, in his opinion, a fair representation of the electorate, Schoen said:
“The simple answer is no John. The bottom line is there were seven percent more Democrats in the electorate in 2008 than there were Republicans. That’s from the exit polls and that’s about as accurate as you can get….President Obama won by about seven points. Given 90 percent of Democrats vote for the Democrat and 90 percent of Republicans vote for the Republican, every time you reduce the margin between the parties by one point, roughly it’s about one point off the margin.”
Schoen pointed out that the Pew poll was based on Democrats sampled for having an 11 percent voters registration edge over Republicans. He further added, “saying that America has gotten more Democratic than 2008, which is a questionable assumption.”
In fact, Rasmussen keeps a running monthly poll of party identification. In the latest poll, released September 1, they found:
During August, 37.6% of Americans considered themselves Republicans. That’s up from 34.9% in July and 35.4% in June. It’s also the largest number of Republicans ever recorded by Rasmussen Report since monthly tracking began in November 2002.
Other polls — including Gallup — apparently have similar assumptions (called “turnout models”) in their polls.
There is a new website, called unskewedpolls.com, that basically reweights the data to fit the Rasmussen party identification. Their results are quite different, giving Romney somewhere between a five and eleven point lead.
Now, this should also be taken with a grain of salt. Basically, they claim (by the site name) to be an unskewed poll. In fact, they’re just a differently skewed take on existing polls. Instead of taking their numbers over, say, Gallup, though, what it should tell us is that even if the polls are being heavily weighted to Obama, Romney’s still essentially tied. Any difference in Romney’s direction in real turnout from the pollster’s assumptions would bring Romney into a lead.
More: Wake Up, Mainstream Media: If Tide Is Shifting, It’s in Romney’s Direction
Gallop of course heavily disagrees with Rasmussens voter identification, but Gallops history hasn’t been too good in this regard. The difference being that Rasmussen tends to release monthly results based on polling taken over several weeks, where as Gallop releases little snap-shots throughout the month based on small little snapshots.
Also of course, even if Rasmussen is correct and Republicans outnumber democrats, by 4%, that doesn’t mean thats what the final vote will look like. There’s a lot to be said for, getting the vote out, so to speak.
Still, there is a LOT of polling shenanigans going on right now! The only pollsters that seem mostly honest are Gallop and Rasmussen, and even they seem to be assuming things will be more like 2008 then not.
Rasmussen was dead on during the 2008 election and got it right…. Gallup was 23rd out of the top 25 polling companies during the 2008 election. You can pick whichever polling company you would like to believe… But for myself… i am sticking with Rasmussen…
Gallop has been SO off for SO long they need to call it a day. Rasmussen doesn’t ask ‘loaded questions’, and I think, that ensures a better result. He also says things like, “…we polled 300 (D) voters and found “X” result. Many other pollsters just throw out the result and you’ve got to dig for WHOM they polled.
I’m with hydereport, I’ll take Rasmussen right now. But I’m going to start looking at unskewedpolls.com to see how they look.
The two top polling entities, both for accuracy and integrity are Rasmussen and Pew Research. Those are the ones to watch.
Lori, the polls are made up. The truth has leaked about the last election and the next. Do you know why Sarah Palin’s bus tour was really canceled last year? Do you know why she stayed 30 miles away from the second debate and chose the death of Steve Jobs to announce that she’s not running? Know what leaked out? Sarah Palin isn’t in this race and is now dodging the media because too many people know the truth. She planted as McCain’s running mate with no intention of winning.
Search PalinsDirtyLittleSecret for the BIGGEST cover up in world history before it disappears forever.
Please, ENOUGH with this OCD behavior towards Sarah Palin. Everyone is so tired of your incessant posts about this woman. You seriously need therapy as well as medication.
Admin – please zap this clown.
He is the BIGGEST psycho SPAMMER on the net, SPAMming for his website, as follows:
“Search PalinsDirtyLittleSecret for the BIGGEST cover up in world history before it disappears forever”.
OMG, not you again. Just to save some people some time, I’ll describe this posters website he’s pimping. Basically, he believes we are being ruled by “body snatchers”. You remember the old black and white movie? Pods from space. Well, this guy is all in when it comes to that conspiracy. Keep an eye on your aluminum foil, this guy likes making hats with it.
The proper term is “net kook”. Waddapain.
There have been a few notables over the years.
Great site. I can see why Obama’s supporters don’t want anyone to read it. There’s no way the government can keep a lid on that forever. Thanks.
So what has Sarah Palin got to do with this particular election? Is she running? No. Did she even get an invite to speak at the GOP Convention? No.
Are you still mentally deranged from her run of 2008? It would seem so. Take pill will ya!
The web site is just a bunch of meaningless junk.
Please stop this damming of Sarah Palin . She and her family are good people. You make up trash about her and her children and even her husband. I have noticed all women who are Republican get picked on. No matter how good they are. I think a loy of it is that they are so much smarter than the Democrats !!! I also agree that Gallop can not be trusted. I like the new unskewed polling as well as Rasmussim polling !!!
Hey, Free Elections.
Hmmm. Elvis and L. Ron Hubbard whispering in your ear?? Black Helicopter hovering over your house? Better stay in the basement, and get yourself unplugged from all electricity. They can hear your thoughts through power lines and internet connections. When we no longer see any posting from you, we will all know you’re safe. Quick! Do it now!! And Good Luck.
You need to go take a nap. Get Palin off your mind for a few minutes.
Polls tell you nothing true. Statistics lie and liars use statistics; same for polls. As another writer mentioned, turn-out is critical. It can be depressed by polling or enhanced by polling. If party A thinks they have the lead in the polls, their constituents will tend not to get out and vote because they think it’s a lock for their guy/gal. Same the other way. If I’m for party B and A is polling better, I’m going to tend to get out and vote to try to stop them and get my candidate elected. Unless party A senses they’re in trouble early enough in the day, then they could lose because they’ve sat back and become complacent. And, as others have mentioned, the questions skew the results; not just whether you asked a R, D or I.
You really believe anything from POS website? There went your credibility.
I think someone has a stiffy for Sarah Palin…he can’t stop thinking about her! He’s probably religious and embarrassed about his woody, so has to talk bad about her to assuage his guilt. LOL
Don’t look now, the black helicopters are circling your house.
what, are you a moron or something?
Lori, Pew has had some polls that are from outer space. It was not long ago that they had a poll showing Obama up 9.
Digging into the poll, they had oversampled Dems by some 17%, as I recall, and instead of asking for head of household, they asked for youngest person of voting age to speak with. They were looking for Obama voters, it seems. And they found them.
This sampling stuff is out of hand by all polling companies. It is hard to trust any of them. Look at what happened in the Wisc. vote– they made a mes of the exit polls– again. And that is talking to people who just voted 5 minutes prior. If they can’t get that right, they should just give up.
Exit polling is some of the hardest to do, statistically, because it is very difficult to weight the responses and get the results out quickly. You have to determine your screening questions immediately, and since it involves person to person contact, it is very hard to remove selection bias – both on the poll taker and the poll questioner. Throw in early voting, vote by mail, and other similiar twists, and it’s a business in decline. Exit polling has become so difficult that some firms are getting out of the business.
On the other hand, oversampling of one population is simply not relevant, because all pollsters adjust their actual response to what they project the electorate to look like.
Harping on the registered percentage of voters by party is an ineffective criticism, since major pollsters (including Rasmussen) do not rely solely on self-voter identification to determine how to weigh a voter. For example, being married is a better indicator of how you will vote than party self identification or party registration.
Using cross-checks between different polls is also used to help detect and correct models. Overlap between different races can be used to project gaps in the models, and test their accuracy. For example, when you see one candidate in one race doing better or worse than another candidate, in the same sample, of the same party you can use that for statistical analysis. Like in Massachusetts, for example, there are a certain number of voters who will vote for Scott Brown but also indicate they will vote for Pres. Obama. When polling the Presidential race and asking Obama voters who they support for Senate you can find selection bias, voter model errors, and other outliers, and bake them back into the model, until your model conforms to all known statistically significant data points.
All most all major pollsters were within their statistical margin of error in 2008. Is it possible that all pollsters (including, by the way, Rasmussen, Gallup, and Pew who show Obama having a handy Electoral college victory) are wrong, and have systematically skewed polls? Yes, it is possible. It statistically unlikely, however, that independent pollsters, each working in their given field, are all independently wrong.
Additionally, the major pollsters have a perverse interest in making sure the polls look very close. If either candidate was actually handily winning, their own business interests would suffer, since candidates and new organizations – who are the sole customers of polling data – would have no need to purchase their product. Likewise, media outlets on television and radio have the need to make the race look closer than it is so that they continue to draw ratings up to election day. This was born out in the Clinton / Dole election. Even though polls were decisively against Dole, the media across the spectrum invested in making it look like Dole was close to victory, when he was not.
All the polls creep closer to reality the nearer the election day. I think they KNOW they are slanting the numbers and don’t want to look completely foolish when the results come out. Part of the reason is, I think, to try to discourage Republican voters.
I agree with you completely!
They can’t discourage me from voting. I will crawl a mile on my hands and knees over broken glass to vote for R2 on November 6.
Liz,
I know I’m supposed to know what “R2″ means but I plead unhipster ignorance.
R2 = Romney and Ryan
R² is mathematically more relevant.
I agree with you Elizabeth. I think about Obummer looking for women voters on The View and laugh. Like women were stupid and did not have families hurting in this economy or maybe losing their jobs like men. Just shows how far out his erred thinking has gotten him. Romney/Ryan 2012.
That is the Rush Limbaugh argument: the pollsters, who are liberals, deliberately skew the data to encourage the dems and discourage the repubs. He then argues that two weeks before the election they know their credibility is at stake, so then start to get truthful–the election appears to narrow. He argues it was narrow all along, they just failed to report it accurately. The pollsters counter by stating they were accurate all along, but people began changing their minds two weeks prior to the actual election. My question: any data from previous elections to substantiate either argument? Is this all snake oil?
It’s actually an economic problem. It is more expensive to determine likely voters than just registered voters. The further from the election the more expensive. Look for all the polls to switch to likely and Romney to increase. Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore were all leading in the polls. Obama didn’t drop as much due to huge turnout among younger voters. But yes we can has turned into no he can’t.
Of course I used to believe the press didn’t actively collude to push a liberal narrative. Now we have proof that they do. Any poll with more Democrats than Republicans is purposely inaccurate. We used to have a word for that – fraud.
Pollsters, and media figures, and candidates all have a vested interests. The first two are vested in a close race. The later have a vested interest in a blow-out race.
The conventional wisdom has been all along that low-information voters – the undecideds – do not make up their mind until after the debates. And if they remain undecided they break towards the challenger on election day.
This was decisively proven not-always-true in the 2004 election, when undecided’s broke towards George Bush, instead of John Kerry. This election was very close in all accounts, and very experienced and strong pollsters made incorrect predictions on this one. The Challenger rule has never been the same since. This is one of the reason why pollsters today try hard to figure out a voters’ leanings, because this is proven to be a better predictor of who they will vote for than who they say they will vote for.
Right now, we are at a weird place in the race because there are very, very, very few undecided voters. So many have made up their mind that their is very little daylight left for Gov. Romney to make up any gap – no matter how small. It appears that television and radio advertising has hit a point of diminishing returns – spending more money yields few if any results.
another word is yellow journalism, something at one time was a serious no-no. now it is accepted.
I to will walk a mile if not more to vote for “R2″ i just hope that many more will do the same.
I also agree that the media is skewing the polls to get “R2″ supporters to just give up.
I will not!
Hey, the more they can skew the polls leading up to the election, the less suspicious the results will look after the ACORN clones drop off the ballots from Mickey Mouse and Al Capone. They’ll still need to avoid having over 100% turnout, though, as in some of the districts that “elected” Al Franken.
First learn to spell Gallup
Just because he did not spell Gallup correct does not make the point irrelevant!
True, but it does give an impression of lack of attention to detail and hasty thinking. At first, I thought it was intentional, since the word is so prominent in the article and easily checked. The misspelling was then repeated by another commenter. Correct spelling is not always essential to making a point, but it is helpful to getting your point across rather than a distraction.
Perhaps the spelling was intentional………the term gallop relates to running horses. In a herd, the lead mare or stallion takes off at a gallop and the others follow without regard to where they are going. Gallup seems to weight their polls unevenly related to actual vote patterns……….thus hopeing other will gallop after their lead.
It was a TYPO, get a grip!! It must be wonderful to be as perfect as you.
WOW !!! Picky picky picky
Post comments on web pages does lend itself to poorer grammer. Word has help me improve my grammer. I am dyslecic (sp?), which is apparent reading my post versus my business reports using Word. A literary grad student should do a study between web comments, emails, and Word documents from the same writers and show how writing improves with better tools.
How about this spelling: G-E-T L-O-S- T
Please ….you should change your name to picky. Yes 2 of us spelled it wrong. So I suppose in your mind people are to stupid to understand what we wrote. You have a problem and do need help !!!
Me I have lots of errors because I turn the lights out and read articles. As long as I get their drift and understand what they are saying I could care less about spelling. I am not anal. Who cares. Maybe they meant gallop as in everyone is running away from this presidential train wreck.
Ahhh…the “SPELLCHECKER TROLL” has arrived to add nothing to the discourse except a finger wag…where has that finger been troll?
The atrocious grammar and complete lack of spelling skills point out how sadly lacking our education system has become. Union teachers cannot be fired no matter how incompetent they are and our children are suffering for it. Home schooled kids are leading the league in the SAT scores and Ivy League school admissions. If you don’t care enough to learn to spell then as far as I’m concerned, you’re just as ignorant in your opinion. Spelling, grammar and manners are the hallmark of the educated and intelligent and it does matter. When I get a resume with misspelled words, it goes immediately into the trash. When I interview someone who doesn’t use correct grammar, they will never receive a paycheck that I signed. When I have lunch with a sales rep who can’t use the correct fork and chews with his/her mouth open, I know I would do without the product before I will buy it from them.
Excellence isn’t a catchword, it’s a way of life for me and it’s the reason my business continues to be wildly successful in the Obama economy.
Be careful before opening such a can of worms. I found a couple of grammar mistakes in your reply, so please take care that your own grammar is correct before criticizing that of others.
they will never receive a paycheck that I signed. How about that I sign.
Blowhard. It’s not a misspelled word, simply the wrong form of the word. “Atrocious grammar and complete lack of spelling skills” are nowhere to be seen except in your imagination.
To suggest that anyone who doesn’t have impeccable grammar can’t contribute anything meaningful is a joke. There are people who have worked with their hands for most of their lives who are much more useful than you!
“I don’t do business with people who use the wrong fork!” Such high standards for Wringling Bros. & Barnum/Bailey!
That pompous rant all because they misspelled Gallup? And “When I have lunch with a sales rep who can’t use the correct fork”? Oh puleease…
I agree with you. I really bristle when I see poor grammar and misspelling. Having said that, though, I realize there are some people for whom spelling (but NOT grammar) is almost impossible–there is a disability almost like dyslexia that prevents those people from being able to spell. I don’t think there are as many afflicted with that as there are poor spellers on the internet. I am guilty of misspellings and poor grammar online at times due to my lack of proofreading and my haste when answering a particularly provocative post. I hesitate to comment on grammar and spelling but I can tell you that if ever given a chance to make choices based upon writing I would always give a huge leg up to the person who is aware of proper English usage.
Maybe you should check your own punctuation before correcting someone else. You probably judge on age and race as well and then call others racist.
Not so fast, my friend! Check your own grammar before attacking that of another person. There are probably companies out there unwilling to do business with you for the very same reason.
Red Delicious, your devotion to accurate grammar and spelling makes you the apple of my eye.
You decide on products based on whether the sales rep uses the right fork? You are missing out on a whole words of greatness from people that don’t give a crap if it is the right fork. They big one gets salad just fine, and the small one can take on a steak too. You are also missing out on employee satisfaction as I bet they go home and talk about the troll of a boss that expects people to use the right fork. You must be a joy to work for!
“its the reason my business continues to be wildly successful in the Obama economy” Weren’t you supposed to add at the bottom of your post “I make thousands from home and you can too. Click here to find out how” I assume the sales people are saving the longer forks for later because they are considering stabbing you in the eye with them.
I have a Ph.D. in mathematics but still struggle with spelling. I had a severe hearing loss as a child but still struggle with spelling as an adult. This may be just a correlation not a causation. I can memorize pages of formulas. There are many days I can’t spell the word “integers” or remember a close friend’s name. It certainly is not caused by lack of intelligence.
Judge an idea on it’s merit.
“When I interview someone who doesn’t use correct grammar, they will never receive a paycheck that I signed.”
“Someone,” “they,” pronouns don’t agree. It’s so easy to make a simple grammatical error, especially in these comments. Do you use formal construction or colloquial?
As someone who thinks faster than I type, have a balky computer that tends to jump around, and a partially numbed finger due to an old injury, I frequently make typos. Some times my editing or cut and pasting goes awry, and I don’t notice it before hitting the ‘submit’ button. If that bothers you, don’t read what I type. I assume others may have the same or similar problems, or be using a small device that is difficult to hit every key perfectly. I read all comments and judge them on the merits of their ideas, not the perfection of their comments.What you do is none of my business.
Totallie agree with you As a jernilizm majer I kredit my skool with teeching me to spell and right good.
Xcuze me wile I throe the bullsheet flag att the Red Deelishius asshat!
I say everything he/she claims to be is pure fiction. I wager the only paycheck he/she has ever signed was for the neighborhood handyman to unplug his/her toilet.
I agree with you; however tense agreement is also important. When “someone”/”they” is incorrect. Should be someone/he or she.
LOL you are cracking me up here. One spelling mistake makes you so beyond anyone else’s intelligence. I have had an Advertising Company for over fifteen years and finally had to close it because of this out of control spending Government. If this Government were half the size “as it should be” We The People would be better off. Of course this is Obama’s plan to destroy United States and become a Dictator !!!
“Red Delicious”, you are a dweeb. You should have checked your writing with the Grammar setting in Word, before climbing on your high horse and posting this drivel: Flesch reading ease – 63.4%, Flesch-Kincade Grade Level – 9.5.
A 9.5 grade level writer, with low D (63%) comprehension ability, deems himself intelligent enough to cast dispersion on another. You sir are unquestionably a Dim-O-Rat, and should wander on over to Arianna’s site, where the true mouth breathers reside.
I wonder what it’s like for your spouse. Does she have to alphabetize the canned vegetables too?
“When I have lunch with a sales rep who can’t use the correct fork”
Is one of them a dessert fork? Or is that what the extra spoon is for? Or is that the sugar spoon that I forgot to put back? And should I still put it back after I ate my soup with it?
This etiquette stuff is really hard.
He/she could have just been typing quickly….I know someone who claims to run his business based on excellence – he closely watches each dime while thousands disappear out the door – excellence, while a worthwhile pursuit, is truly elusive…and pride comes before a fall….
Bah, you do realize that many people consider forum commentary to be informal communication much like speech, and therefore, they do not treat it like they would a formally written letter or essay? Sure, I try to have a clean comment, but I know I’m not perfect and neither do I expect everyone around me to be.
“When I have lunch with a sales rep who can’t use the correct fork and chews with his/her mouth open, I know I would do without the product before I will buy it from them.”
I know what you mean. Last week my poss picked up the wrong fork to eat his salad. Upset me so much I almost dropped my handful of mashed potatoes.
You mean before you will buy it from him/her.
I’ve worked in very few jobs that I didn’t advance quickly in. In the Navy I went from E-1 to E-4 in 10 months. That generally takes no less than 2 yrs. Was named LPO (basicly a foreman) in both squadrons I served in befor being medically retired due an injury.
After the Navy I applied at a factory. Admittedly, a bad decision on my part knowing that I like to work out in the weather. In the interview my soon to be new boss noticed that I’m good with numbers. Told me “I’ve got a place I want to try you out at. I’ve tried 26 poeple in the last year and non of them worked out, so if you don’t work out don’t be emabarrassed. I’ll find somewhere to put you” Yes, that’s quote from someone I met once, 6 yrs ago. He all but begged me not to leave when I quit. I didn’t have a chose. They couldn’t pay me a wage I could live on, and I refuse gov’t subsidies
worked in a machine shop on a 90 day probationary period where I got 2 raises that I didn’t ask for in my first 30 days.
3 yrs ago I took a job in the petro-chem industey as a hole watch/fire watch, the low man on the totum pole. Within a year I was promoted to safety/rescue
…but you wouldn’t even consider hireing me becauce I can’t write a paper or spell cat correctly 6 times out of 10
I find you, sir or mama, arrogant,egotistical, and completely out of touch. My message to you is: keep you’re pay check. At this point in my life, you probably couldn’t afford me anyway.
The differance between you and me is, I can look into someone see their drive. Regardless of edcuation level. Do they want to succeed or do they just want a pay check?
Doctors can also treat your disorder now too. Get some help and don’t be such a tight you know what. What we do on web sites like this is so different than on the job. People might be in a hurry after a hard days work with a very strict boss and be in a hurry to read as many stories and comment that they make a few typo’s. I would rather be around the Typo King. Glad your business is doing great though. I doubt that it has anything to do with spelling though. You just probably hire great people.Give them a break.
RD,
you have issues!!
I always wondered why some people feel the need to be spelling or grammar checkers in blog postings.
For some of us (my hand is raised) grammatical errors are the equivalent of a fingernail across a blackboard. Ouuuuuuuccchhhh!!!!
For example, “When I interview someone who doesn’t use correct grammar, they will never receive a paycheck that I signed” has at least two (but I would say three) grammatical errors.
Here’s the grammatical version of the sentence: “If I interview someone who doesn’t use correct grammar, he or she will never receive a paycheck that I sign.”
Final note: It is not easy to copy-edit one’s own writing. Reason? Because one knows what is SOPPOSED to be there, one assumes it IS there.
This applies to possible spelling mistakes as well as to grammatical errors. Sometimes in making a change in one part of a sentence, another change is required in another part of the same sentence, something that’s sometimes overlooked if one is time-pressed and/or recognizes — correctly — that a perfectly composed and written blog post is not the end of the world!
@Maria:
Usage of,
“When I interview someone who doesn’t use correct grammar, they will never receive a paycheck that I signed”
vs,
“If I interview someone who doesn’t use correct grammar, he or she will never receive a paycheck that I sign.”
is highly subjective at best.
SPELL CHECKER IS PROBABLY THE SAME ONE WHO BITCHES BECAUSE I USE UPPER CASE TYPE. PROBABLY SERVED AS A HALL MONITOR IN JR. HIGH SCHOOL.
Nah, using all caps is just lazy and it’s annoying to read.
ALL CAPS tend to fall into the domain of tinfoil hatters, Truthers, and my friend Mike, who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t agree with.
Take it from someone who proofreads – People who use all caps are my least favorite ones because all caps are hard to read.
Speaking as a person with bad eyes who does not like to change they letter size all the time because it only applies to the article and not the comments your use of spa made it so easy for me to read. Thank You. W ish it was mandatory. OOPs did I spell that right? Write? hahahaha
Eeewwww!!
This attitude is why, despite your “wildly successful business,” you cant get laid. Have a shot of Jack, loosen up the pocket protector, and relax.
Most grammar Nazis (or grammer nazis) fail to remember that English as she is spoke is a living language. It changes constantly. Words and phrases enter and leave the language on a regular basis. The spellings change. As long as communication results we should count it as a win. Someday we may all decide that ‘gallip’ is the proper spelling and pronounciation. Hopefully then all the grammer Nazi’s heads will esplode. (NOTE: all oddities in spelling and phrasing in this message were deliberate!)
Since I do genealogy as a hobby, I frequently note how language has changed. It’s problematic to get concerned about spelling when the issues of who will lead this country are being discussed. I support R2 and hope that Obama will enjoy his vacation in Kenya.
Thank you for your comment. Ignorant and lazy Americans will get angry with you for doing so, but you are providing a good service. It seems as though nobody in America seems to care about spelling anything correctly anymore. In fact, willful stupidity has become something of a badge of honor or an identifier, such as the purposeful reuse of the word moolah instead of mullah, nucular instead of nuclear, etc., particularly after being reminded incessantly. Some folks’ faces need to be rubbed in the mud until they get it right. It isn’t cool to be ignorant and lazy anymore.
You do realize that “correct” spelling is a completely random phenomenon —- dictionary standardization only occurred in the last century, and was simply one person or a committee deciding their preference for a spelling. Shakespeare wrote during a period in which there was no spelling standardization. Does that make him an idiot, lazy or some other epithet?
In the age of spellcheckers no one can hide behind the existence of non-standard spelling rules. It is no longer a question of knowledge, but a question of discipline. If you are not sure, type in your comment into a word processor, spell check it, then paste it into the comment box. Of course spell checkers cannot catch grammar and content mistakes, such as mixing “there” and “their” or writing “I catched 3 different type of fish” instead of the correct “I caught 3 different kinds of fishes”. But at the highest level, what no spell checker or grammar training will ever correct are the cognitive or moral shortcomings of a writer. If you have nothing to say or are one of the habitual liars or perpetual obfuscators then your message will be useless or harmful. Case in point: Bill Clinton’s now infamous line: “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”. A grammatically passable but corrupt-to-the-bone uttering. Can I stop now?
Nothing absolutely “random” about standardization. Arbitrary, perhaps, but not totally “random.” No more random than Carolingian minuscule (lower case) or putting spaces between words, periods at the end of sentences, etc. While being an “English Nazi” may not be necessarily useful in the context of postings to a website, it’s to our credit that we have an evolved language with generally fixed rules in place. You think English is difficult, try learning Pashto/Pushtu/Pukhtu. Anyway, while poor English grammar/spelling are signs of poor education, it doesn’t follow that poorly educated equals stupid.
To TVM (pedant to pedant): Correct English usage calls for numerals less than 11 be spelled out – you should have used ‘three’ instead of ’3′. Just sayin’…
Of course spelling is important, but if you’re really interested in helping people out – or just want to insert your remarks so everyone knows how smart you are – there is a slightly better way of doing it.
For example, I’d say: “Nitpick: It’s spelled ‘Gallup”, or even “Spelling correction note: It’s Gallup, not Gallop”.
It’s all in the way you do it. Being a troll over a word is easy. To be constructive is just as easy once your ego is out of the way.
Pogue – Derogatory phrase used by front-line infantry units to describe rear-support or staff units.
Mahone – your comment fits the above. Galloping Gallup
(It’s Gaelic for Kiss my @$$.)
“Pogue” has transmogrified to POG…”people other than grunts” at least in the Corps…my fellow leathernecks were unacquainted with the finer points of frankase…
Please spare us. “Gallop” is spelled correctly if use like a horse is “galloping”. What is it about dimwits that think they are profound point out a spelling error due to the inadvertent proper noun-verb use, when we all know the correct usage? It’s simply a matter of the hand writing faster than the brain. There is no ‘spelling cred’ to be had here, genius.
Okay, as a neurotic compulsive copy editor, I resent that. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I resent it. However, drawing much of an inference about someone for this kind (ie, passes spellcheck) spelling error seems a bit extreme.
Amen.
Did the individual who ranted, raved, and belittled others about their spelling and grammar really type “never receive a paycheck that I signed”. Hmmmm, wasn’t there something in the bible referencing a speck and a boulder?
That would be nuculear… Not nucular.
I guess that would be nuclear — see, we’re all subject to typos and other human failings. Always strive for correct execution within the context, but let us not beat ourselves or others up over misfires of the nervous system. Time is too short.
Above all, vote — vote right — a proper outcome will restore our focus. It’s important. Real important.
Did it ever occur to all of the spell check trolls out there that for many of us, English is a second language and considered one of the most difficult to learn. All that aside, I don’t fully trust polls, Gallop Gallup or otherwise.
Agreed. I always considered that a post, is hardly more formal than chatting. We aren’t writing an essay here.
If you’ll do a quick search you’ll find that either, nucular or nuclear, is correct. But is it really relevant to the conversation! Do you interrupt a conversation to correct someones grammar too?
A posting that has misspellings and errors in grammar permits some readers to make assumptions about the writer, usually correct (although we have no way of knowing for sure)including the quality of his or her education, his attention to detail, and whether or not he cares how he is perceived by others. I have two points to make about this:
1. Even those who denigrate the “spelling Nazis” are probably careful to make sure their resumes are error-free, and are glad to pay someone like me to do that job for them.
b. As a newspaper reporter and staff writer I had a reputation of being “error-free,” and I took pride in that. Our copy-checking lady knew she didn’t have to proofread my work, not because I was spelling and grammar-perfect, but I took the time to do my own proofreading. That saved her time, and saved the company money.
I intentionally included a mistake in this post. Who can find it?
John, considering what we pay commenters, I think we’re getting good value.
Actually, two.
i) ‘b)’shouldn’t follow ’1)’
ii) there should be a space after ‘)’
Proofreading one’s own work is NEVER sufficient.
Red John, qdalgado pointed out one error correctly, but after the parenthesis there should be a comma, because otherwise one would be required after “correct”.
How nitpicky may I get? In paragraph one, you refer first to “his or her” but thereafter use only the male pronoun. A little further down, one could argue that the comma after “error-free” is either unnecessary or incorrect since there is no expressed subject for the second half of the sentence and “those . . .” is understood as the subject. Next, “spelling and grammar-perfect” would be corrected by some (many?) to “spelling- and grammar-perfect.” And in the sentence following that, the comma after “time” could also be deemed unnecessary or incorrect for the type of reason given above. Of course, I didn’t give a single thought to any of these on first reading (except maybe the “his or her”), since the intention was perfectly clear. (Note: Any mistakes found in my own comments above were obviously included intentionally. Yeah, right.)
So everyone knows absolutely whether it’s “cancelled” or “canceled”? And while we’re at it, how about “useable” or “usable”, “vender” or “vendor”. And can I start a sentence with “and”? That used to be a no-no.
The dictionary might surprise you. I found out that most of the well known dictionaries state that the preferred pronunciation for the days of the week is with a long e sound, e.g. Mon-DEE, Tues-DEE. In all of my life, I’ve never heard that pronunciation. I’ve always heard Mon-DAY, Tues-DAY. So you might be surprised at what’s “correct” and what’s not.
P.S. I still say “Mon-DAY”
Your complete lack of punctuation renders your criticism nonsensical. Your sentence should read:
“First, learn to spell Gallup.”
Glass houses and all that, you know?
Point well taken. If you publish on the Web, you should try to avoid spelling errors and poor grammer. As for posting comments, a person should expect poorer grammer. The web forms are not as easy to work with as the word processing software resident on your computer. For this reason, I do not think that the Cloud will replace the software found on PCs.
Spell check: grammar.
Maybe he owns a horse.
The entire thread regarding spelling & grammar is off topic. It is petty, arrogant & self-serving. It is a waste of time & space. The topic is the reliability of Polls. If you have nothing to contribute, go away.
Then why did you join the thread?
Stick this spelling crap where the SuN doES not SHINE.
Typical Lib think process, deal with emotions Not LOGIC.
This is the Internet and you want a thesis diatribe.
Excuse me some of us think before we type and Others are Dyslexic.
Either way there is a right and wrong , Black and White not grey like you try to make it.
Task, since you are so concerned with spelling, how about you learn how and when to use a comma? It should read “First, learn…”
Rasmussen polls likely voters, while Gallup polls registered voters. Using likely voters tends to generate a more trustworthy sample.
Good point. Registered voters over-samples previously undecided voters who have decided to not vote for the challenger (Romney) but do not like the incumbent either (Obama) and so will stay home and not vote. It is a very poor methodology for polls.
Gallup also got a call from David Axelrod whining about Gallup’s methodology followed simultaneously by a lawsuit from Eric Holder’s DOJ concerning some obscure whistleblower case that had lain dormant for years. Just coincidence, I’m sure.
Gallup’s problem is they have to show Obama ahead since they are now under attack by the justice department. “The nail that stick up gets hammered down”.
So Gallup’s numbers are now worthless.
Why do not they assume things should be more like 2010?
He didnt say 2010, he said 2008.
But you have to use a baseline somewhere, and last Pres poll is the only real logical. Then adjust from there for enthusiasm difference and you are set.
Very good point, David Francis.
Don’t change the subject. we’re discussing spelling and grammar.
considering the DAY AFTER gallup came out with a negative poll for bozo, they were sued by the DoJ, their credibility is questionable.
Ignore polls presented by left-wing web sites.
no worries on this end, the only reason I frequent bolshevik blogs is to be a king hell Ringlefinch…
Gallup has seen itself being strong-armed by Axelrod to throw out impartiality and purposely tweak the results to show Obama with a lead (May, 2012). That intimidation apparently has not worked out as well as Axelrod has hoped since even with over-sampling Obama is still not able to lead in the polls. Leading in the polls is a huge psychological win for Democrats – it allows them to continue to raise money and it sometimes reduces Republican turn-out at an election (why vote if the other side is just going to win anyways). With the results now in a neck-and-neck horse race to the finish, fundraisers for Obama are seeing contributions dry up and Republicans are excited to vote. Romney will not have the same kind of landslide Reagan had in 1980, but he will win big in the electoral college and even bigger in popular vote.
Yup, I totally agree, Pat. Like Rush said, isn’t it interesting that before Gallup was sued, Romney was up by a few points over Bambam. Now, they’re neck and neck, somehow. I’ll never believe in another Gallup poll; they’re under pressure from the Regime now and will be shy about going against the Far Left Party from now on. My prediction for the election is Romney by 15 points. I base that upon hearing a poll recently was skewed for 50% Dems, 23% Republicans. I’m not buying it.
Well stated. Skewed polls can be a self-fulfilling prophecy when the manipulators play them correctly.
In any case, if God smiles upon us and they fail, the Dems’ spin will place the blame for defeat squarely upon:
1) racism
2) voter suppression
3) GOP PAC money
I guarantee it.
Is there any reason that you would believe that republican turnout will not be superior to democrat turnout this year? I believe democrat turnout will be lower, and especially the black democrat vote won’t come anywhere near the record number from 2008, in my educated opinion.
It would be folly for any pollster to ignore the following dynamic:
MAJOR PARTY ID [1996-2012]
Date/ R / D
1996/ 35%/39%
2000/ 35%/39%
2004/ 37%/37%
2008/ 32%/39%
2010/ 36%/35%
2012/ 37%/33%
As a corollary to Heinlein’s Razor: Never underestimate the tendency of the lazy to follow the malicious.
I agree with your comment except your suggesting that Gallup is an honest pollster. Right now the only one I believe has any credibility is Rasmussen. You are correct that the pollsters who are in the can for Obama skew their polls usbog a 2008 model that presume the same high level of turnout in 2012 that there was in 2008. That simply is not going to happen. Obama alienated every sector of the voting blocs and many are disenchanted and disillusioned with Obama. Turnout is key. You can presume that the base of each party is behind their candidate. The independents are the swing vote and Romney is leading by 3-4 points with independents in all the key swing states. The MSM is going to do all it can to swing this election for Obama by trying to convince people that he is so far in front of Romney that Romney could not possibly win. Only in the wettest dream.
to make matters worse, there are different methods to estimate the cell-phone vote. And the cell-phone only crowd would be heavily obama, i would guess
read the method of ras
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/about_us/methodology
there’s also a nyt article on this some weeks ago.
all in all, polls are very dubious at this point. Ras has done well before, so i assume it is tied up going into the 9th
I don’t know why you would guess that the cell-phone only crowd would be pro Obama. I know several people/households that have only cell phones and are strong Republicans. We engage techonology just like “the other guy”.
Food for thought on the assumption most cell phone only voters break for Obama: I live in a deeply conservative suburb of Indianapolis. I do not have a land line – for the express purpose of avoiding contact with telemarketers, pollsters and to save money. I have numerous friends and acquaintences that also have no land line – for the same purposes. We rely soley on cell phones out of practicality. Practicality is a common trait among conservatives. The cell phone screen in polling likely gives Democrats too much credit.
Cannot make good assumption as to how cell phone owners would vote, many don’t have jobs and are not happy with this economymhow cell phone owners would vote, many also have land lines, many use cell phones for work and are taxpayers who don’t want taxes raised and don’t like gas doubling in the last three years while we don’t drill or built pipelines.
I have six kids and none will vote for Obama or any Democrat this election. That is not normal for them, but that is how mad they are at the party leaders. All of them have cell phones and the two with land lines have them for internet connections only. I have a nephew who also has no land line and he’s never voted for a Democrat and won’t. I have both, but I only keep the land line because we live in the woods and cell phones are not as reliable here during emergencies like massive power outages.
You sound like a grown up. Anyone in an area that can have widespread power outages-hurricane country or winter storm areas should have a land line and a corded phone not dependent on electricity.
Otherwise you can not only freeze in the dark or sweat after the hurricane, you can’t even tell anyone about it!
Don’t assume that a land line will be available continuously. Check with the phone company and make sure that your land line is actually connected directly to the central office. We live in North Alabama and we have two land lines. After the tornado outbreak last year, the whole region was without power for five days. About 12 hours after the power failed, both of our land lines died and didn’t come back until the power was restored. Turns out that our land lines go through a device called a “concentrator”, which is remote from the central office. The concentrator has a generator, but after 12 hours it ran out of fuel, and the phone company never got around to refueling it.
What, having only a cell phone makes you a liberal? Or only poor people cannot afford a landline? I don’t think you can draw any inferences like that. I’m pushing 50, have my own business, wife and 4 kids, am very conservative and have no landline at all. I know very few people who have landlines anymore.
I never participate in polls. I used to ask how can a poll be accurate when some people just don’t participate? I was told that the pollers had methods to compensate for non-responders. That still doesn’t make sense. How can you make any determinations about people who don’t respond at all? How can you make assumptions about things for which you have no information?
Cell phones are an irrelevant issue. A Democrat with a landline answers the polling questions the same way a Democrat with a cellphone does. Same for Republicans and Independents.
The only potential issue is if polls that look at partisan makeup are underestimating a portion of the electorate if they only poll landlines. But even that doesn’t matter when other things are considered: Rasmussen doesn’t currently poll cellphones, but they DO weight answers based on other demographics. If data shows young people are more likely to be cellphone only and are more likely to be Democrats, then they are already weighting for that!
So polling landlines vs cellphones, is irrelevant.
Now, as to why polls with cellphones show better results for Obama — because the number of Democrats in the sample is large than those in polls without cellphones.
Duh!
This would be true only for those receiving taxpayer-funded cellphones. One of the many perks of being “poor” in America.
All the media is trying to do is create enough doubt so that when Obama ‘wins’ by a narrow margins enough folks will think the election WASN’T rigged.
If they blow it and people don’t buy into it, things are likely to get very, very interesting. Because right now they’re pretty much reduced to polling DNC Delegates to even get a tie. The fix is in, they’re just trying to create enough of a smoke screen to hide it.
Orion
so If obama wins by a narrow margin.. should we sue and have a recount in numerous counties like libs did when bush narrowly won his second term?
yes, like when bush won?
This is exactly what I’ve been sayimg for months.—the rigged polls are to provide cover for stealing the election
The Obama campaign has certainly been acting like it’s way behind. They take foolish risks and go on the attack in ways that don’t make sense for a front-runner. I suspect that their internal polls are showing Romney ahead among likely voters as well. Rasmussen’s results have been pretty bankable historically.
I still think this is all a net plus for us. It breeds overconfidence among Obama’s supporters and keeps our side sharp and unified. Meanwhile there are very few Republicans who take what they hear from the MSM at face value, so I don’t see us being discouraged.
I wouldn’t be certain about the cell phone only being heavily Obama. Out here in the middle of nowhere, where phone lines DON’T give you fast internet (no DSL) and there is no cable, IOW, heavily Republican rural area of NY, almost no one under age 60 has a land line. No point in it. Not sure why the over 60′s cling to it- because they also have cell phones.
and they don’t take polls …
A new fact. I am retired and almost every older person now carries a cell phone, even if only for health and security reasons. There are even free cell phones for low income seniors. I think this “skew” is overstated.
Wife and I are over sixty and haven’t had a land line for the past five years. We use cell phones only and many of our friends do the same.
Yes we definitely vote and always have!
I’m over 60, have a cell phone and vote. However, I live with my elderly parents (90 and 91 years old) who no longer drive, Mom has dementia, who have a landline AND a cell phone but won’t use the cell phone. Both vote.
Your mother has dementia and she votes? Does that mean someone else chooses who she votes for?
There are different kinds of dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is one, but there are many. Some are mild, some are severe. Some progress more slowly than others. Different areas of the brain may be affected. The prognosis may be affected by other health conditions the patient has. Some forms have effective treatments, some don’t.
The poster’s mother may not remember what she had for breakfast, but in voting she’ll presumably be relying on long-held core beliefs.
My own mother is 90 and though she sometimes has a little trouble with details, she still gets her teeth into politics with the same fierce enthusiasm she’s always had. She supported Perry in the primaries, but will happily be voting Romney/Ryan this fall.
Should mention that my mother does not have dementia (thank the Lord!), but my grandmother had it.
Those cell phones aren’t “free”, they are paid for by taxpayers.
Many of my friends who are pro Romney only use a cell phone because they are tired of paying for a land line that is a pain in the butt.
Having a land line does two things: It gives you FAX capability and if you’re self-employed you still need to be FAX capable, and, it gives you telephone service in a power outage unless the phone lines are down. Even cell service often goes down during a power outages as the cell system either doesn’t have backup power or in a prolonged outage the backup generators run out of fuel.
I found out the hard way last week in an 18 hour power outage caused by a windstorm that even though I have a landline, it has been digitized and uses the cable system and since the cable was down, I still didn’t have landline services. My cell phones went down with the power outage as apparently the cell tower in my area didn’t have backup or the backup didn’t work. I’m pretty well prepared for emergencies and had backup power, heat, supplies, etc., but I had no communications at all for eighteen hours; working on that issue!
You sir, and others in similar situations should look at purchasing a mobile HAM radio and obtaining your technician rating. Morse code has been removed from the technician test. In a very wide spread enduring disaster HAM radio will be the only effective long range communication available to most civilians. Be sure to have a functioning generator and fuel to keep batteris charged.
Good luck, and be prepared!
“still bitter & clingin’ to my guns!”
I would rate the cell phone only households as mostly non-voters. They are mostly young people who have recently moved. I think there’s more of a skew due to the penetration of voter id and answering machines. I don’t know anyone who picks up the phone without knowing who it is. Pollsters are only getting folks who want to talk to them. This is the same sort of skew that throws off exit polls. I think it under counts what Grover Norquist used to call the “leave me alone coalition” who tend to vote Republican.
I’m a conservative that is cell phone only, as are many of my cell-phone only friends. I have voted in all elections for the last 18 years. For me it was a purely financial decision to drop my phone. I was paying twice for a service, and even after I accounted for land line use I would never run over my cell phone plan. So we dumped it almost 5 years ago and haven’t had a land line since.
I would say that in my area, this is very common. To the point where when you consider the effects of bundling TV, Internet and Cable, the cable providers in my area would be essentially “paying me” to maintain a land line. That is, if I had cable… the whole not paying twice for things you know. Thanks to online content/rentals, I maintain a high speed connection for business and only pay for a cell phone.
If you want to make a cut-off for likely/not likely to have a land line, I would go with under 35/over 35, unless you work in a tech field in which case you are less likely to have a land line.
When you run your own business, you are constantly looking for waste to cut. I found that having a cell phone was a necessity, for me and my wife. The landline (which is less reliable than our cell phones) became just another expensive annoyance.
I’d agree that the elderly are not likely to give up a their landline and go cell phone only, but for working aged people, it’s a no-brainer.
I haven’t had a land line for 11 years. It’s not that unusual anymore.
Right – Land-line phones for most people are 1)bundled with wideband internet, e.g. FIOS, or 2)in disaster-prone areas where cell-towers may fail sooner than “old-fashioned” battery/generator-backed central offices, or 3)in rural areas with poor wireless coverage. Absent one of these reasons, people are getting rid of land-line phones as economic stress helps them break old habits.
From anecdotal evidence cell phone only voters are probably a representative cross section. Hard times have caused a lot of people to cut their land line service to save money even when they have jobs. Inflation and fear abound among the electorate.
The polls show it is close or that BHO is ahead. So if BHO wins the public will accept a narrow victory as legitimate. If Romney is very narrowly ahead, voter fraud can turn it to the Dems and the public will also accept. And if Romney does win narrowly, again the polls will have set it up as potentially legitimate. But will they accept a big Romney victory?
The gap between the national polls — that should favor BHO because of huge margins in New York and California — and the battle ground states is puzzling. I would expect that Romney would be behind in the national polls but better in the key states. With over 60% of the vote in two of the largest states, I would expect that Obama’s margin in the rest of the country would be negative if the overall national polls are even.
Doesn’t make sense at all.
That’s a good point. Obama will win California handily, but as far as the Electoral College is concerned, there’s no difference between that and Obama winning California by one vote. So a bunch of extra Obama voters in CA may influence the polls without having any effect on the actual election. (The same could be said of Romney in, say, Texas.)
Yes good old California… I too live there and that state will go for Obama, says a lot about the majority of people who live there, probably will be the second state that files for Bankruptcy after good old Illinois the home state of that loser Obama. Great State that California…. so why are they Billions and Billions in debt? Same mindset as the Democrats in general… stupid and spending and spending that won’t end is their game.. Maybe we can rename the place Spain since Illinois probably has Greece secured as the next official title.
Which is why this state really need to be cut in two already!
Down here in the South of LA area, it is almost difficult to find someone who will say they are going to vote for Obama – and this sentiment extends basically down to the Mexico border. In LA proper you find more Obama supporters, but even they are pretty divided.
Split Cali in two north of the SanLuisObispo/Kern/SanBernardino county lines and all of a sudden you have an extremely Red state with a Electoral College count that would cancel out most of the North Cali Electoral vote.
Way past time it is done. Southern California is (for the most part) productive and business friendly and would thrive on its own away from the leach that is the North. (cant say the North would be able to survive without the revenue from the South though – which is probably the only reason the state hasn’t split despite years of talk about it)
Interesting. I always assumed that all of SoCal, except for Orange County, was pretty solidly blue. Question: isn’t the far northern part of the state (e.g., Chico) also pretty conservative? Or has it been invaded from Oregon?
Seems to me the divide on the whole Left Coast from Alaska down to the Mexican Border is the Coast Range mountains; east of the mountains is sane and productive, west of the mountains there are the idle rich, the crazy, and the crazy rich. That’s true even in Anchorage at the ultimate limit of the coastal mountains. The coast ranges end in Anchorage and Anchorage is Purple, leaning Red. The rest of Alaska west of the mountains is Purple leaning Blue or deep Blue. The same is true all the way down the coast; gives “The East is Red” all new meaning.
Probably north of Redding is going to be conservative. Sacramento is generally conservative, especially the suburbs. But the most conservative parts of California is going to be Riverside County (where Richard Nixon was born), LA County, Orange County and San Diego County. If the state were split in 2 as the original poster said, it would indeed change politics in this country for years to come. With the state basically bankrupt, splitting it in two makes more sense than ever.
Here Dave, this will likely help you understand California more:
http://cdn2.likethedew.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/KvB-ElectionMap-480×322.jpg
That is the 2004 Presidential breakdown; which is the last non-referendum election we have really seen (2006 and 2008 was a referendum on Republicans, 2010 of course was the Anti-Obama election. 2004 was straight Bush or Liberal, make up your mind election)
California & Illinois will go deep blue in Nov. out of self-interest. A second term BO will redistribute wealth—er, bail them out with federal funding, enabling Govs. Brown & Quinn to continue their profligate ways a bit longer.
” But will they accept a big Romney victory?” – I think yes, but it’ll be another nail in mainstream media’s coffin (with which the public likely associates the trad pollsters.)
They won’t have any choice to accept it. They will have to accept it just as they accepted Reagan’s landslide in 1980. Reagan was behind in the polls in October thanks to crazy polls and Reagan whipped Carter from coast to coast. When an incumbent is running for president, any undecideds are basically folks who have not decided whether to support the other candidate or simply not vote (thus removing them from the ranks of likely voters). Obama has 47% of the vote right now and if he can’t get that to at least 49%, he doesn’t stand a chance in the election. And keep in mind – the 47% is WITH the skewing by those running the polls, such as adding more Democrats than even turned on in 2008. With black vote dampened due to high unemployment and the gay marriage controversy, expect Dems to barely be even with Republicans this year – especially considering the huge increase in registered Republicans.
It is not possibly to rig an election and show a huge victory. In fact vote rigging only has a chance when the race us within .5% or less. It is simply not possible to “invent” the millions and millions of votes it would take to gain a large victory.
I have my own, only slightly paranoid, theory about how that could go, and it would not involve massive vote-rigging on a national scale. It goes like this: One Election Day evening, based on early returns from California and the East Coast blue states, and maybe some fudged numbers from Ohio and Florida, the MSM all call the election for Obama. They do this before 10 PM Eastern time, so that everyone who is watching the returns sees it. Then they stop covering returns, and instead turn to the after-election stories assuming an Obama win — the second inaguration, all of the glamorous celebrities who will be there, the new entitlement programs that Obama will create by executive order, the supposed rosy outlook for the economy, etc. Election returns are given no more coverage; every once in a while they assure the viewers that Obama is winning in a landslide, but no numbers.
Overnight, it emerges that Romney has actually won, and won big. All of those viewers who tuned out after the call last night wake up hearing rumors and seeing expressions of shock from the MSM. They assume that Romney stole the election somehow, a perception that is reinforced by the media. Then, the MSM stars the meme that the election result is “controversial” and “divisive”, and they call for Romney to concede in order to “unite the country”. They talk about what a great American Romney will be if he concedes. The Justice Department jumps in and threatens to tie up all of the states that went for Romney in court. The states can’t afford to defend all of the lawsuits, and they direct their electors to vote for Obama. Barack Hussein Obama accomplishes (term used loosely) the feat of winning his second term as President with 43% of the popular vote, in a race with no significant third-party candidate.
Unfortunately, if you’re going to use telephone poll data, you need to adjust for cell phones, VOIP, hangups, etc. There no good way to do it, just ways that are less bad than other ways. With more and more households without a land line (such as mine), this method is eventually going to break completely, and they’ll have to go back to interviewing people in public places.
Pretty hard to get a random representative sample by polling @ locations.
Remember a few months ago when Gallup attempted honest polls? Presto, the IRS (or Justice?) started their investigation into Gallup.
This sort of “conincidence” skews the polls.
All that skewering and he still only breaks even.
Even WHEN (not “IF”) the Dem’s have four or five million dead people voting this November, The Anointed Narcissistic One is still going to lose.
Most independents are only just now starting to pay attention to the election.
“skewering”? Did you really mean that, like skewering a hot dog on a stick? Or did you mean “skewing”, as in “bending, warping”?
Never mind. Spelling don’t count…. we’ve already bin told that. Neither due errors of number, incorrect homonyms, ect. Bearly wurth notiss. Move one folks, nothing two see hear…. Like, have a nice whatever.
And IMNSHO, it’s going to be a bloodbath…not the election, though that’ll be a shellacking, too, but the AFTERMATH, the first few days after the election.
My Prediction, and I’m sticking to it…
Obama will win, California, New York, Illinois, Vermont and the District of Columbia.
Obama May win Washington, Oregon, Maine, and Hawaii.
All other states will vote Romney.
The republicans will gain 12 in the Senate and hold the House with 7 to 11 seats gained.
– And Gary Somebody will be totally forgotten.
I love it when people put their best out there for everyone to see. Doesn’t hurt that I happen want to see another rendition of “throw the bums out”. We can’t get a landslide of independent politicians so the next best thing is to make their tenure something less than a lifetime golden ride. Taking that one step further would be short term politicians who act to create their own golden parachute shorter period of time. Nuts. We need a different way to run this railroad.
Being a political and technological anomaly, a 64 year-old conservative living in San Francisco, CA (aka Fantasy Island), with a land line and no cell phone, I have never been polled. Since I registered “Independent” I’d expect calls, from someone.
The absence of Obama signage here is noticable; but in all of 2008 I saw maybe three signs and two bumper stickers. Funny story: in ’08 I was approached outside my local coffee shop and asked to sign up for an Obama newsletter. After declining, I questioned the young man in the blue t-shirt; he let slip, in a moment of candor, that he was being paid…”but not enough.”
Actually, we could go to the sources and ask Presidents Dukakis and Kerry their views on polling.
Obama “may” win Illinois!
Charlie,
Odd that you’d write about this today; I wrote something on this topic yesterday (for my personal blog that no one has ever or will ever read). It’s short, so I’ll copy it here Minus the charts. Enjoy.
2012 Election Prediction (and data!)
I’ve been a tad bit busy lately getting into the George Mason econ PhD program and all. 2 years between posts seems reasonable to me.
…anywhoo,
I was thinking about how many people (especially on the right) are saying that the polls are skewed by unrealistic party ID weighting, i.e. if the sample contains 10% more Democrats than Republicans, of course it’ll show Obama ahead of Romney.
I did a little research which confirmed my suspicion that self reported party identification is the most reliable predictor of voting behavior. It’s better than race, age, income, anything. So it occurred to me to compare past party ID to election results and extrapolate 2012 results from current (mid-Sept. ’12) party ID data. I’m just cutting and pasting from Excel so it may be ugly, but here’s what I found:
In 2004, Republicans outperformed their party ID by 4.7%
In 2008, Republicans outperformed their party ID by 0.4%
Today, Republicans have a 4.3% advantage in party ID
If this party ID vs. vote pattern holds, there will be a Republican landslide in 2012 of between R+4.7% and R+9.0%
Well, so link to your blog! Then you’ll have more readers.
This is your article Charlie. Linking your readers to my blog seemed a bit rude. Besides, I write mostly for my own satisfaction, so I’m not hungry for readers.
…but if you insist http://publicpundit.blogspot.com/
My big fear is that, if/when Obama loses in November, you’re going to see race rioting comparable to the Rodney King verdict or when MLK got shot. Believe me when I say it’s very possible. I’ve had exposure to black democrats in the last few months and it’s scary; they worship Obama like a god and dismiss any scenario where he doesn’t win by a landslide. The press is making itself culpable by feeding this delusion.
Yours is a reasonable fear. Combine it with mine — that race and Occupy-style riots, or plausible threats thereof, will be used to bias the election in Obama’s favor — and you might find yourself wanting to sleep with one eye open.
I have had this worry also. Even though I eschew tinfoil hatism, this time I and joining in. Brass, lead, beans and rice.
I agree, and this is not good as I stick out like a sore thumb in my neighborhood.
I suspect that the George Zimmerman case ia a card they have been holding onto. If it looks like Obama might loose in a close vote, watch for Angela Corey to unexpectedly drop charges at the beginning of November. (pre-planned) Race riots will ensue, disrupting the election.
You’d best be cautious…
The Chief of Police of Los Angeles made the same kind of statement 3 days before the Rodney King verdict was announced saying the Police needed to be ‘prepared’ for violence and was Excoriated by the press for having done so.
Local politicians made ceertain that the L.A. City and County Police were NOT able to ‘Prepare’ for violence before the Riots Broke Out!
I too expect race rioting if/when Romney wins. No matter how inept and incompetent Obama has proven to be, a vote for Romney will be deemed racist by many, including many in the mainstream media. I’m not a big tin hat guy either, but given this president’s behavior, ruling insanity out seems rather, er, well… insane. So…
What about the likely scenario in which Israel attacks Iran before the election (as Obama seems quite content to let Iran become a nuclear power)? Might this be the beginning of WWIII? Given his clear preference to govern by decree, what are the odds of Obama attempting an executive order postponing the election indefinitely in the interest of national security? The national security concern would be ironic of course (well, more insane than ironic) given that he has largely succeeded in his goal of bringing America to its knees before the world. Another option might be that Obama, in desperation to appear effective as he sees his defeat looming, decides at the last minute before the election, to finally use the new uber bunker-buster bomb against Iran. This could also lead to WWIII, with the same executive order attempt above. Hopefully there will be a peaceful transition. One of my liberal friends commented on how nice it was to see a peaceful transition last time. I wonder how he’ll feel about it if his liberal friends choose rioting this time around?
I have never seen the blatant racism that exists with this election. When Romney captures 0% of the black vote, while they are 20-40% unemployed. The anti-gay sentiment (of the majority of Black congregations). And the religeous discrimination that is also present during this election. It is very disturbing to me that this still happens in America. I must be very nieve to think that people would vote based on qualifications, past experience, merit, truth telling. It truly amazes me!
The polls and the media are definitely creating a situation to justify massive complaints about a Mittens win. If it’s close, the lawsuits will be horrendous. If it’s a landslide, who knows how bad it will get.
Love him or hate him, I think Rush Limbaugh has a point about the polls. His point is that they are being used to SHAPE public opinion rather than reflect it. He also goes on to say that they tend to get more accurate closer to the election because the polling organizations want to salvage some of their own credibility. With that said, Carter has a slight lead over Reagan in 1980 and Dukakis had a 17 point lead over Bush in 1988. I’ve read in more than one place that the pollsters are oversampling Democrats by anywhere between 11 and 14%. This doesn’t exactly REFLECT the make up of the electorate but then again, we know who’s side the main stream media is on.
Unskewedpolls.com may be on to something. Both Drudge and WND have stories of Obummer buying a retirement home in Hawaii, ready to move in by January 2013. It looks like he has seen some scientifically accurate polls that the public are not being made savvy to which indicate he is going to be as humiliated as Carter was after 4 years in office.
Concur. Carter was told months in advance to expect losing big. Obama is in the same boat. Explains why Obama does not bother with Israel and panders to blacks and gays, no Keystone pipeline, and releases prisoners from Gitmo. Solidifies his creds with liberals that he wants for dinner guests.
I predict that in 44 days, it will become 1980 all over again. Jimmy Carter II will be sent packing so fast it will make his head spin.
“There is a new website, called unskewedpolls.com, that basically reweights the data to fit the Rasmussen party identification. Their results are quite different, giving Romney somewhere between a five and eleven point lead.
Now, this should also be taken with a grain of salt. Basically, they claim (by the site name) to be an unskewed poll. In fact, they’re just a differently skewed take on existing polls.”
If the data is corrected to reflect reality, it is not “a differently skewed” viewpoint.
dr_bugsy, the term is appropriate, because the data is only corrected to “reality” iff the Rasmussen turnout poll is right. I may believe that, but I can’t prove it in the same way I can prove the law of gravity.
Gravity??? PROOF: Hold an object at eye-level, and drop it. Or, watch an airplane take off….always the same principle: when velocity exceeds drag, and lift exceeds gravity, ergo, it flys!
Rasmussen has the most accurate poll data going back more than 12 years. Consider that before you diss it…
I “dissed” the report, not Rasmussen.
Read before you comment.
I still have found NO referrence to the most accurate poll of all. How many Democrat candidates have called the president to come and campaign for them? From everything I can glean, that number would have to be ZERO. No dem running for office wants to be seen anywhere near Obama. They all know his REAL approval rating is in the single digits.
Dude, if there were a way to know what the real vote would be in November, a lot of things would be different.
Now, this should also be taken with a grain of salt. Basically, they claim (by the site name) to be an unskewed poll. In fact, they’re just a differently skewed take on existing polls.”
If the data is corrected to reflect reality, it is not “a differently skewed” viewpoint.
******************************************************************
Correct, Charlie Martin has made a glaring error in his claim Unskewed Polling has, by adjusting demographics to reflect reality, themselves skewed the polls.
Reality is truth and over sampling any party is phony. Polls today done by the MSM are merely voicing their wishes and attempting to shape the race rather then report on where it really stands.
Don’t be silly. But using the Rassmussen party identification numbers, they’re weighting their polling results to fit a model of who would really vote if the election were held today. That model is itself statistical, based on a sample of only a few thousand people at most, taken over a month; the value they’re using is the mean of a distribution of possibilities with some error estimate, and even then it’s one chance in twenty that the results would be wrong if the whole population could be polled.
It’s a poll. They have a different model, but that doesn’t mean the poll isn’t skewed by that choice of model.
The polling is heavily skewed. There are too many questions that ask you to vote yes if you really mean no. I wonder who is paying for the polls to be conducted. Follow the money and you will find the Loyalty.
It’s not who votes that counts; it’s who counts the votes.
Do not believe any poll out there. This is the pundits’ busy season, They have a vested interest in pretending this race stays close even if it’s not — the demand for air time keeps prices high and fills pockets.
And do not accept any spin on this election. The “mainstream” media cannot be trusted. Today in America, the Fourth Estate is the Fifth Column. They have a dog in this fight — a dog they helped elect in 2008 — their Journ“O”List proof of that. That dog is now cornered by his own four-year record of failure. The result? We see vicious lies and personal attacks coming from a narcissist who will do or say ANYTHING to keep his power. Recognize that. An animal, political or otherwise, is most dangerous when cornered.
Right up until Reagan’s landslide wins in 1980 and 1984, polls and pundits alike had Carter and Mondale ahead or winning. Take Hugh Hewitt’s words to heart: “If it’s not close, they can’t cheat: Crushing the Democrats in every election and why your life depends on it!”
And still no mention of third parties.
Obama is the incombent and he is below 50% and people are saying Romney is not doing well? Well, the elections will not be rigged, Romney will win. There are just so many democrats who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 who are not voting this time around. Just get your friends and neighbors to see the truth and go out and vote.
The only two polls that I found to be accurate are: 1 The poll on 6 November 2012. 2. The small donor contributions. Other than that all polls are just speculation and fuel for the fire if you are a political junkie.
At a different level, I belong to my own particular political choir, so am biased to the right.
Having said that, it also seems to me that with no horse race, the pollsters, pundits, statisticians, “experts” talking heads and columnists, would have no job.
When the economy is in the toilet, the Arab world coming down around Obama’s ears, all presidential performance indicators make Jimmy Carter look good, then you hear that Romny ahd a bad week!…Yikes.
There is in my opinion,a media narrative, on both sides, that insists on a neck and neck race.
I am 71 years old, and unless this country has changed more drastically than I realize, Mr. Obama is in for an historical spanking , media, pundits and experts not withstanding
During the Primaries I found this happening as well. It was obvious very early that the only real choice was Romney, yet the media stirred things up to make it a horse race… which is still affecting Romney today.
The media is everything Democrats find sinister about corporations. And they have always had a Democrat bias.
If the media had reported that Roosevelt was very, very ill,almost near death, would he have won re-election so many times? And what would the world look like today if America had sent a healthy President, almost any other person, to Malta?
The world, especially Eastern Europe was not well served by a media unwilling to tell the American people of Roosevelt’s health issues.
And again today they refuse to actually discuss Obama’s failures. World history is changed by a biased media.
I think it is high time to end media malpractice.
Want a good poll? Check the odds in Vegas. When people put money on it things change…
Like Intrade?
http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=743474
Not in this case. It’s all GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. People make their bets based on the info they have available. The info is effed up, so the bets are, too.
Intrade had Obamacare going down in the SCOTUS by 70% to 30%.
Intrade is giving Romney nearly 3 to 1 odds. Anyone who bets on Romney will triple their money if Romney wins.
There are a lot of folks here talking confidently that Romney will win–but how many of them are willing to bet their own hard-earned money on it?
Me, once intrade finishes the paperwork.
Colin – From where do the bettors on Intratrade get their information? Is is possible that the bettors are being influenced by the Leftist media (the Ministry of Propaganda and Lies)? Just a thought.
Intrade is more skewed to favor the Democrats than any conventional poll. The standaard explanation that 71% of investors (today’s result) really think Obama will be reelected doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. It’s not even close to traditional polls.
Though I have no evidence for this, I suspect that Intrade has been flooded with buyers who aren’t motivated by making money but by partisan leanings. A group of well heeled investors could be buying “Obama” stock in order to show him in the lead, and thus demoralize Republicans.
It wouldn’t take much money to do this, perhaps 100 thousand or so. It’s at least as good a return on investment as the same amount spent on political commercials.
this will be another of others that will be decided by those with empty pocketbooks, otherwise the gainfully employed, etc. it has happened with Kennedy,Reagan and Clinton in our recent memories and it will happen again. regardless of how they voted before they know they don’t want just to survive. I still believe a majority of us are a prideful people and know that 4 more of this will be disasterous to them and their neighbors. the independents vasilate their vote and won’t be defined by any poll to the real extent that they are out there.
Check UK bookmakers odds on the election. Hands down Obama.
While in London, October, 2004, while waiting for the CEO to arrive to do a budget presentation, I was asked by some of senior staff about the upcoming election. I just came back from holidays seeing family and when I announced I think GWB will be re-elected they were gob smacked and refused to believe it.
Brits tend to believe their own hype.
These polls never factor in the vote from deceased people, I know they are hard to poll but they all vote Democrat.
Everyone does realize that if the polls showed one as a heavy favorite, neither would PAY for more frequent polls to detect a trend or break.
Whereas if they’re usually TIE, Both sides are ordering the polls more frequently to get a favorable one for their guy.
Just saying, the biggest polling “metric” is the pollsters formula is created to get more polls.
What it should tell us is, it doesn’t make any difference what the skewed poll tells you, just show up and vote.
The NBC, CBS, CNN, and other MSM polls are counting on the dems encourage voter intimidation and to vote more than once (seems to be more common practice than originally thought).
Can you imagine the left’s reaction if Romney were to win by 11 points? The shock might send some of them to the streets.
Where they would make far easier targets.
I’m looking for a “Mars Attacks” scenario when their heads exploded after hearing Slim Whitman (I think) sing. Not that I want their heads to literally explode … but figuratively? Yep, I’d pay to see that.
I don’t place any stock at all in polls. If you want to read about something really cool check the University of Colorado at Boulder “economic model.” It has correctly predicted the last eight presidential election.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2012/08/22/analysis-election-factors-points-romney-win-university-colorado-study-says
I’ve been pondering the CSU reliability for this election. I read up on what the model accounts for and, based on my quick read, it seemed to be mostly individual “pocketbook” issues. IOW, how many are feeling the financial pain in this economy and to what extent.
And that’s what makes me question whether this time around this model will work. Obama has worked without ceasing to increase the number of people on foodstamps, which is the gateway to all kinds of other welfare bennies as well. And these programs don’t keep people just above the starvation level, as Libs like to wail. All the time, more stores are taking EBT (electronic benefits cards). Look around. You’ll see people stocking up on really nice food at Sam’s. I’m happy when anyone doesn’t gorge on junk food, but if you are buying Ballyshannon Irish cheddar and fresh lobster ravioli, you simply can’t be needing to scrape the bottom of the dogfood bowl just to feed your chillen.
Point: fewer and fewer people are personally affected by the real economy. The EBT voter is NOT impacted by how unemployment is, how high taxes are, how difficult business loans are to make. They are not affected by health care costs, cell phone rate hikes (get those free, too), gas prices (bus vouchers), utility hikes (utility assistance programs), or most anything else that makes taxpaying Americans who ARE participants in the real economy go “ouch.”
So I have to wonder if we have reached a tipping point where all the old indicators are just out the window. Where so many people — at least enough to PERMANENTLY skew elections away from the producers to the takers — are completely personally impervious to pain in the national economy, even pain in the real economy. They get their “check” regardless and they know they are going to continue to get their “check” regardless. All they have to do is vote for the dude who wants to keep their “check” coming.
This was one of the valuable things about Romney’s 47% remarks: there were actually people who were shocked at how high the percentage of EBT voters is. They know instinctively that that gives the takers enormous power to exploit the producers — and the poor exploiting the rich is just as immoral and dangerous as the other way around.
Let’s be honest here, how on earth can the election polls be this close. Obama has 4 years with over 7% unemployment, a 4 year recession/depression, gas pushing $3 to 4 a gallon, and the things going crazy overseas.
I’m sorry but if Clinton or Reagan had that type of record going into the 2nd term election, I doubt if they would win.
I can see hard core follower voting Obama, but I can’t see how the average voter would want 4 more years of this mess.
The “average voter” is no longer a white married guy.
The “average voter” is now a single Hispanic female.
Since 1980, the percentage of Hispanic and black and Asian voters has increased sharply. It’s now 27% of the electorate, up 14 points from 1980 when Reagan won. And they don’t vote for Republicans.
Marriage has also declined in recent decades. Single women are now the fastest growing voting group in America. And they’re solidly for Obama.
Take the demographic breakdown from 2008 (white/Hispanic/black/Asian, married/single) and run Reagan’s percentages against it. If Reagan had to contend with today’s demographics, he would have lost the election.
Alternative polls – Look for faded Obama ’08 stickers that have not been replaced.
My feeling is that the polling will be rigged to reflect the planned rigging of the election. The most glaring example of polling manipulation were the early GOP primary polling that marginalized Rick Perry, who was drawing big crowds, and elevated Rick Santorum, who was drawing basically nobody. The intent there was obviously to ensure a Romney victory.
really???? PATHETIC!
IT’S OVER. DONE. NO, YOU CAN’T POS. YOU CUT CORNERS. ROVE HAS THE INTERNAL NUMBERS (STATES, COUNTIES, PRICINTS AND DEMOGRAPHICS). NOT EVEN GALLUP AND RASMUSSEN HAVE THOSE. SILENT MAJORITY. GO MITT!
Funny thing about polls, I just don’t pay attention. I work for a local weekly news publication, the editor (self admittingly) is a liberal, told me that he has been polled several times in the last six months. All the while being registered as a (NPA), no party affiliation, I have never been polled…Hmmm…
I’m an “unaffiliated” voter here in PA and have never been polled. Then again, if somebody calls and I don’t know them, I always say “Not interested” and hang up, hahaha. If my elderly, 90 yr old, deaf and partially deaf parents answer and it isn’t someone they know, they just hang up. Maybe it just runs in the family.
This website is on the right track but its results don’t make sense. Rasmussen shows the race tied so “unskewing” the poll using the Rasmussen model should show the race as approximately tied. You can see more on this at http://www.jcpoll.com/ and follow me on twitter for more updates at rushbaby79
Well, no, that’s not quite true. The unskewedpolls poll apparently uses Rasmussen party identification. It doesn’t follow that Rasmussen weights their Presidential vote polls that way.
I have been voting and observing polls since 1980. I learned by experience to disbelieve polls because starting with the 1980 election they would show a commanding lead by the democrat until a week or two before the election in which they would shift suddenly to the Republican. Then in 2000, the polls started accurately showing the result even if the spread was off. Generally, based on my experiance in the 1980s and 90s. A close poll really means the Republican is ahead and a commanding lead for the democrat means a close election.
It is even worse for Obama than Unskewed shows. They weight the results as though voters will show up in percentages equal to their party registration. That ignores the “enthusiasm gap”. Republicans are extremely enthusiastic about firing Obama and trying the next guy. Democrats are not equally enthused about keeping Obama. Look at the 2010 mid-term election results as an example. Obama admitted afterwards that it was a “shellacking”. I have not heard of any voting demographic this is more enthusiastic about Obama in 2012 than in 2008. To the contrary key demographics, one being independents, are rejecting an Obama second term by significant percentages. The only good news for the president has been polling. Now we know the truth. At the end of the (election) day don’t be shocked if Romney wins 55% to 45% with an electoral landslide. That is the only poll that counts and the only one the Democrats can’t fix (unless its close!!)
This scenario shows that Obama played his socialist card too early. After Obamacare, he should have let his other issues “sleep” until he got a second term. He should have done what he needed to do to keep jobs in this country and help the economy. But, he got impatient and cocky. Part of his problem is that he did not spend his early life in a Representative Republic. He spent them in former territories of Great Britain and was indoctrinated by a father and others who endured imperialism. The hatred got passed on to Obama. This is really sad, because he finally did come here and did benefit from a more fair system, but is following an old, generational hatred. One of the most important differences between Great Britain and the new United States back in 1776, was that the United States decidedly got rid of the most important part of the class system. The Brits made sure that it was hard or nearly impossible to move up. In America, that control was taken off and the goal was to move up. Obama has never seen that. He is stuck in history, fighting a Great Britain that his father hated and that does not exist anymore. The question is: Does this country have to suffer because of this? I say no, vote him out. He’s had his 4 years. It is time for him to have a silent retirement.
Retirement? Yes, absolutely!
“Silent”? Obama? *sigh* We should be so lucky.
Jimmy Carter opens his big pinko yap way too often to suit me, and Obama will surely be ten times worse.
Out: The Oprah Network. In: The Obama Network!
7:00 – Good Morning, Obama
8:00 – Headline news, with commentary by President Forever Barack H. Obama
9:00 – The Cooking Show, with Michelle O
10:00 – Michelle’s Magical Garden Grows
11:00 – Eye on Fashion, with Michelle Obama
12:00 – More headline news, with commentary by President Forever Barack H. Obama
1:00 – Invest for My Future, with Barack Obama
2:00 – Disposing of Valuable Antiques from Allied Countries, with Barack Obama
3:00 – Malia and Sasha’s Storytime: A Very Special After-School Special, starring Barack and Michelle Obama
4:00 – Ba-ROCK! – The Latest Music Videos
5:00 – President Forever Barack H. Obama Analyzes the News for You Slack-Jawed Yokels
6:00 – Turn off that TV, save some energy, and go eat your arugula, fat-bottomed bourgeois cretins! [Obama Network sign-off message with the blood-striped O flag waving and the Internationale playing in the background]
Seems that voter enthusiasm needs to be determined to maximize accuracy.
I’ve been somewhat skeptical of these polls when you look at other attitude polls that have come out.
“Do you think the country is going in the wrong direction?”
“Do you think we need more government programs?”
“Do you like the new healthcare law?”
All these questions and more like them are answered strongly negative. And rightly or wrongly, most people identify attitudes like that with whoever is currently in the White House.
These are not really polls. They are sent by so-called “public interest groups” (I use the term loosely, as many of them seem to be in the business of fund-raising and little else), to a selected target audience, as part of a fund-raising effort. FE: You are on somebody’s list as once having contributed to a Republican candidate, there is a likelihood that you will (as least to some degree) fit a profile, and likely to answer “yes” or “no” to each loaded question. “Do you think the country is headed in the wrong direction?” YES. “Are you in favor of more legislation to limit the number of guns in this country?” NO. “Do you think the EPA is too aggressive in regulating privately-held land and water resources in this country?” YES.
Reverse the questions based on a target population of liberals.
Please check the box with your donation to our effort, and we will send these a copy of these results to your Representative in Washington! (Whoopie!)
Wonder if the msm has ever heard the maxim: “The truth will set you free.” Guess not. Like some in here have already stated, I’m concerned about what will happen if Romney wins. I’m also concerned that the election could be stolen since we have a Spanish company counting the votes and not a company based here. My understanding is that the votes will not be counted at the precinct level.
Yes, I think the msm has heard that maxim – and think it means “will set me (personally) free of being employed”. Too scary to get anywhere near!
I do not trust polls, pollsters, of the journalist that report the results of polls. The historically low percentage of undecided voters in the recent polls make me very suspicious.
I think that Rush is totally correct when he said that polls, like gallup, that have admitted they poll about 12-15% more Dems than Independents or Republicans, are trying to SHAPE the vote, not report the true poll numbers…this is so true, because in April and a couple months after that, the Gallup poll had Obama down at 44% consistently and Romney leading by 6%, but then the White House called in…actually CALLED IN the Gallup polling heads and questioned them about their data and how they were getting it etc…seemingly threatening them to start putting Obama ahead again, because the day after, they filed a lawsuit AGAINST GALLUP for some trumped up charge from a few years ago! Since then, it is interesting that Gallup has put Obama ahead of Romney every day since the lawsuit from the US Government was filed. Obama and his THUGS, criminals and liars that run the Government did Obama’s bidding obviously again. What a bunch of wanna be mafiosas.
We’ve seen time and again without end that the media will not give Republicans an even shake, and they proved in ’08 that they have no professionalism or ethics at all. Pew actually spotted the Dems 19 points in one poll about a month ago. McCain made the mistake of trusting the media to do the right thing. Romney can’t afford the same mistake.
Thanks for the unskewed polls link. Interesting web site, looks more like what I suspect in the current voting outlook.
A libertarian leaning free spirit in search of alternate realities, I’ll be voting for Romney, cell phone only, slowly ambling into senior citizen.
By growing up in Indonesia he was exposed to Islam everywhere and even registered at school as one whether he practiced or not (he would have had to during prayer time, 5 times a day, or be ostracized. What he did not learn was the Pledge of Allegiance, how many states there are, to hold your RIGHT hand over your heart as a token of respect and while reciting the pledge, and other very basic little things like that.
I personally hope the MSM and their polling outfits keep padding the numbers to favor Obama. It motivates the Romney voters. And the Democrats are very prone to actually believing their own propaganda, which leads them into all kinds of foolish choices. E.g., Obama is spending a bunch of money on TV ads in Alabama, a state that Romney will win easily.
It’s all academic at this point. For the next few weeks the polls will “tighten” partly because they have to, lest they lose all credibility with those who don’t read stories about skewing, and partly to increase interest in the race.
On those points, remember two things.
First, the only positive proof we get that polls are right or wrong is on election day. Anything much over a month old can be ignored as old news, and you can always make excuses. But you cannot be absurdly wrong in the end, or you do look stupid. Note, though, that it’s often enough to pick the winner, when that is clear. People don’t question an overstated margin, at least, they don’t question it enough, unless it’s a nail biter expected to be a route. But if you say “X by 10″, and the margin is 5, you don’t pay much price.
Second, remember that most polls, except for the unpublished in-house ones, are for the media, who want to sell stories. During the summer, they get to sell the story they like, but now it’s in their interest to sell “neck-and-neck” stories.
The LIBERAL POLLSTER always SCEW their result to favor obama if they NEVER tell you or they-ll their poll way MORE democraps than GOP because ALL THEY WANT SOCIALIST BIG WELFARE COMMIES OBAMA TO GET RE-ELECTED EVEN ITS MEAN CHEATING SO DONT BELIEVE THE POLL almost ALL OF THEM expcept for ramussen all BOGUS
Am I wrong in thinking that few conservatives would even speak to a pollster that called?
If someone I didn’t know contacted me and asked me about my politics I would tell them to mind their own beeswax.
True, that. The only skew left unaccounted-for by everyone, is the “willingness to be polled” skew. Anybody have hard data on how that corresponds to party ID?
The company I work for has several contracts with the state i’m in, and even if I was willing to be polled, I’d probably say “undecided.”
Again, I am sure plenty of people feel similarly.
There’s actually a meme going around for conservatives to lie to pollsters and say they are voting Democrat. This happened quite a bit in the exit polls during the 2010 election.
Well, I’ve cheerfully lied to exit pollsters at my polling place (never been polled by phone, either land line or cell) — but now I’m wondering: If a lot of conservatives and libertarians are lying to pollsters, then if we don’t like the poll results, to what extent are we the authors of our own discontent?
One of the fundamental traits of liberals is their need to broadcast their beliefs. It’s why you often see little crap-box cars plastered with left wing bumper stickers, but seldom see a conservative version. It’s simply a part of their mindset, they are extremely keen on making others adhere to their beliefs and lifestyle choices.
I think, as you suspect, this influences poll responses. Conservatives tend to be private people, whereas a liberal cannot resist the opportunity to espouse her beliefs to a pollster.
Gallup is being “investigated” by the “justice department” as a form of intimidation. The charges are a fake but could cost Gallup a fortune in legal costs. Their polling will be virtually worthless until Holder is gone.
Gallop (I misspelled it on purpose, I HATE pathetic UN-O-fficial blog spelling police!) was using Registered voters for their daily Obama approval poll.
After Axelrod intimated them, they started using National Adults, the LEAST accurate. The same day, Obama shot to 54%. Now, it’s 47%.
Least accurate – National Adults. Only about 30% actually vote.
Next is registered voters. About 60% vote.
Most accurate is Likely Voters, about 80% will vote.
Rasmussen uses Likely Voters.
Pick your poison, I pick Rasmussen.
Real Clear averages all the polls, including some HORRIBLY skewed ones (+ 11% Democrat in a NATIONAL Poll? I am appalled. And it’s only to keep Obama’s 3′s up, and the warm fuzzy with MSM is very Chavez-centric).
I don’t watch poll 3′s. I watch poll trends. So when the pollster does these whacky methodologies, it throws it off.
Rasmussen is consistent.
You are absolutely right. I’d hang up on them.
The only poll we should be concerned with is the one we vote in during the elections in November.
What is really disappointing is that you can’t go to the mainstream media (CBS, NBC, ABC, NY Times, and get factual data. They never do investigative journalism, and just report stories that will favor Obama. A real shame, and hopefully the investors and advertisers will do something to stop this rape of American viewers.
Colorado researchers have nailed every election since 1980.
I’ll go with a track record like that.
They predict Romney winning easily.
I have been tracking the polls for years. I have a good handle on where the candidates are. It has been my experience that 95 percent of the polls are skewed towards the democrat candidate. They usually get back in line near election day. With all of that said: I see Romney with a lead of about 2-3 points nationally. The real poll is going to be election day. Who has more excitement around their candidate?
Not really relevant, but:
Heinlein’s Razor is a modern restatement of Occam’s Razor, (William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349)).
Wiki describes it as:
“Occam’s razor (also written as Ockham’s razor, Latin lex parsimoniae [trans: the law of parsimony ]) is the law of parsimony, economy, or succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select from among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions.”
It does not involve stupidity. That was Heinlein’s “special case”, as opposed to Ockham’s “General Principle”.
As we get closer to election day the REAL numbers will come out. No one wants to look like a fool, since they make their rep on being “correct”. It’s all smoke right now. Rasmussen has been the one to follow in the past and has been on the money. Watch how the other Polling services start to mirror Rasmussen numbers in a few weeks leading up to election day
Everyone google “Martha Coakley Up By 15 Points – Boston Globe” . This was published days before she lost in a landslide to Scott Brown. Front Page. Above The Fold. Thats journalism Bean Town style.
DEWEY WINS!
If you’re so confident the polls are wrong you should bet on Romney on intrade and triple your money: intrade.com
That’s a great point — I’ve considered it, but I’m concerned about Romney’s likability numbers.
This was covered on Meet the Press. Romney has the worst likability numbers (not sure what the data source was) in all of history according to Meet the Press. He’s at “50%” “not likable”, with Dukakis and Bush Sr. of 1992 the only ones being close.
But is the “likability” issue a media red herring and creation?
I don’t dislike Romney and I’ve never understood why he is so seemingly disliked by voters — by all accounts, he’s a great family man, generous with his money, saved the Olympics, worked with Democrats in Massachusetts.
The “dislike” numbers are driven my the media and are based on the same skewed demographics as the horse race polling is. The media will say anything to tear down Romney.
Habve any of you seen Romneys history including his academic record? It will knock your socks off and makes Obama’s back round look terrible by comparison. Is it any wonder the media never mentions his college records and achievements?
Read on;
Mitt Romney is an American politician and businessman. He served as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is now a possible Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential election. EDUinReview will now take a look at his education background.
Romney was born on March 12, 1947, in Detroit, Michigan. His parents are George and Lenore Romney. Romney has three older siblings and one younger sibling. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and attended a private preparatory school called Cranbrook School from seventh grade through twelfth grade. During his senior year at Cranbook, he joined the cross country team. He met his future wife, Ann, during his senior year; the two agreed to get married at his graduation in 1965, but did not end up getting married until March 21, 1969.
Romney attended Stanford University for one year and then moved to France to serve as a Mormon missionary for 30 months. When he returned to the USA, Ann had started attending Brigham Young University and Romney decided to join her there. He graduated from BYU in 1971, where he studied English and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. Then, at his father’s urging, Romney decided to pursue a joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration degree at Harvard. In 1975, he graduated cum laude from the school and was named a Baker Scholar for being in the top five percent of his class.
Actually, I’m going to, and will write about it.
I would totally do that, but I have no extra money in Obama’s economy.
I live in the Phila. area. I work with union workers of all trades. Let me tell you something about the “union” vote. First of all about 30% are repubs and many-many are conservative democrats! What I hear from them, not a scientific poll, is that they dislike the direction Obama is taking this country and many will vote Romney because Obama isn’t doing a good job. Even many African Americans all talking badly about Obama, that’s not to say they’ll vote for Romney but some of these guys are starting to sound like disgruntled Obama supporters in other areas of the State of Pa.
Problem in Pa is the Phila. machine which is totally corrupt and the dead are known to vote in Philly! One tactic the dems use is to gather up blocks of people and bus them to the polls, giving them money and meals and tell them to pull the democrat leever. Of course voter intimidation is very popular in Philly also. We can’t forget the shanannigans in 08 and past years.
Funny thing happened this morn at a dunkin donuts. Black guy complained to the Indian women behind the counter ” I thought it was $3.65 the other day for a coffee/bagel today yer telling me it $3.90! DAMN! Yer starting to sound like Obama now. Next thing ya’know ya gonna be taking all my money” I couldn’t help but to laugh out loud. The guy turned to me and said you white folks were right about him(obama).
Just thought of a counter-strategy to the bussing tactic: reach the people FIRST, tell ‘em all to take the Demo’s rides and money but vote their consciences in the privacy of the voting booth!
Sadly, Alan,
Your strategy is not likely to work, since those blocks of folks probably do not have consciences–nor do they pay any attention to the election. They are so feeble-minded that they are swayed by the money and the meals. These are the folks who will do ANYTHING for a buck.
The closer November 6 becomes, the more accurate the polling data will be. Just watch …. Democrat media and polling concerns will still want to ‘save’ their image as being ‘honest’ and ‘correct’ their polling was. Just watch ….
Congrats! You just got bombed by Drudge!
The only “poll” that matters is the one we wake up to on November 7th morning.
Right about now, it sure seems obama is having problems, no matter who reports it. My money is on the American people, the ones that are awake and have seen the failed job and failed policies of the last 4 years.
and YES, Mr President, WE DID BUILD THIS.
Back in middle to late September 2008, I was stopped in traffic on my way to work. I heard on the radio that polls were showing a tied race for the Presidency at 48% each. The week before this, McCain was up by 3-5 points in Gallup and Rasmussen, but by the end of that week Lehman Bros was having issues and on the verge of collapse. That morning more stories of financial collapse came across the radio and as I sat in traffic and noticed the gas prices still hovering around $4 and the economy starting to go into shambles, I thought to myself that people must not be paying much attention if the race is really tied or that Obama was indeed a flawed candidate. Then at another red light, I saw a car approach next to me and it had a homemade sign plastered on the back driver side window. I will never forget the words and to this day I haven’t. The sign basically said, “If you are not mad, you are not paying attention.” A week later, Obama pulled ahead of McCain by 4 points and never looked back as the first debate started and people started “paying attention”. Once this happens for 2012, Romney will pull ahead and not look back.
Not sure if it was Meet the Press on Sunday, but they showed a “swing states” graph of polls — all showed Obama ahead by big margins, I mean BIG margins. A lot of them were Fox News polls they sourced.
A lot of the noise is that Romney’s way, way behind in the swing states.
Chuck Todd did a little demonstration on the electoral college, showing Romney has zero chance (yet they put Nevada in play for him for some reason). Obama was getting Iowa, WI, OH. They gave Romney FL.
So that’s the noise out there.
Barring unforseen circumstances like a Middle East War, this election is going down to the wire. We are as divided a country as we were in 2000 and 2004. 2008 was an aberration due to the economic crisis and the novelty of a black president. No poll, no “projected EV total,” no “state of the race” makes a damn bit of difference until about 2 weeks before this kind of election. Indeed, the 2010 Dem drubbing and the poor or at best weak state of the economy are fundamentals that strongly favor a challenger. I would put zero–that’s right–ZERO stock in any predictions until about October 25th or so, and even then the results will not be clear if it remains as close as it is now. At that point it will be a turnout election, and the polls will be essentially useless.
I think the emphasis on the skewed polls is to keep the chins up on Obama’s supporters that propelled him to victory in 2008. It’s self-fulfilling. If they can get the ’08 turnout exception (blacks especially) then maybe the skewed numbers, ex post facto, would make sense. The chill in Chicago is that if the “real” data were the headlines, then those marginal voters would stay home on election day.
Just some recent polls to ponder:
The most recent FNC poll had 41% D and a very low sample of I
PPP did a poll of Ohio and had women polled at 61%. There are only 51% women in Ohio.
Survey USA polled Florida and their sample had 18-29 year olds representing 30% of the electorate. That would be higher than 2008.
NBC/WSJ had D had 42%.
Caveat Emptor!
This country has only been close to 41% D in the last 30 years and that was in 2008 with wind at their backs. If true party IDs were used, then it would show a Romney lead or tie based on the sampling of IND.
I NEVER respond to polls. And I ALWAYS vote. I wonder if there are more like me out there.
Yes.
Forget the polls and do your own research. Then vote for the cure: God, Constitution, voter ID, and ANYBODY but the failed socialist marxist experiment or any of his stooges.
YES… Polls are what they are… A money making organization…. Unfilled there are iron clad polling standards enacted… Punishable by death… They are all skewed…
R/,
Skewed toward Dems? Why not. More dead dems vote. More illegal dems vote. More dems vote twice.
I hate to say it, but the skewed polsters could be right.
No thinking person should give credence to any political poll. Scientific and political thought have achieved the kind of separation only dreamed of by those who tout the separation iof church and state. Remember Benjamin Disraeli’s famous quip about the three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Or, as I like to phrase it in 21st century America, “lies, damned lies, and polls.”
All of these so called professional polls are just so much garbage especially with a close outcome! The only poll that counts is the one on November 6th, and if Obama wins we are all BIG LOSERS!
Polls are essentially useless. Look at the polls going into the Wisconsin recall. MSM polls had the Governor recalled by a small margin. The reality is he won by a larger margin than he did in the general election. In the last Presidential election Rassmussen had called it within a few tenths of a percent. So, in reality the only poll that counts is the one on November 6th. But if you want to keep a close eye on how things are going, trust Rassmussen.
There is another factor: the Bradley Effect. Oddly enough, Obama polls much heavier numbers than he delivers. People aren’t even honest in exit polling for Obama and report they voted for him when they didn’t.
I keep wondering why a source known for its success in predicting outcomes is never queried on Presidential elections – Las Vegas bookmakers. Certainly a Vegas bookmaker knows how to interpret data and certainly Vegas bookmakers are as involved with the outcome of the November Election as anybody eles is. I personally would love to know the odds books are giving on this Election.
Both the Iowa Electronic Markets and Ladbrokes in Britain are giving roughly 3 to 1 odds against Romney winning.
If the election were held today, Romney would lose. Even RedState.com admits that.
It isn’t only “skewed” polls. It’s the fact that polls are coming out fast and furious (implication of Obama’s Fast & Furious intended). Every day there’s a new poll, every day my Google News homepage “skews” the stories to grind out the same polls, grind out how Obama’s ahead, with smaller sub-heads of Romney’s taxes/47%, as if the economy or the Benghazi consulate attack don’t exist. Google News homepage fine print at the bottom of the page states “The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.” But we all know computers can have filters – and those filters are set by humans.
I know I can “personalize” my Google News page, say, to include PJMedia or any other page I like. But the fact that what I have now is the “default” (or skewed) selection and placement says it all.
Gallop is an asymmetrical gait used at high speeds by quadrupedal organisms such as the gait seen in the horse.
Gallup is not a word.
Neither is Blurgle.
You have to admit he’s right.
The whole election process should be scrapped and a new one should be put in place. …one with no polls and greatly shortened. Election for one of the most important jobs in the world should not rely on polls or what type of phone the voter has. There should be a standard list of things each candidate should meet: proof of birth and the usual things included on a resume: college records, job history, membership in organizations, etc. If an income tax statement is required, the number and type should be specified. ALL the current campaign organizers should be out of work. There should be a limit on the amount of money spent on campaign workers. There should be standards for publicity. Equality should be established and regulated If a current official is running for reelection, use of any type of goveernment transport should be banned.
The United States, becvause of current budget shortfalls, should greatly curtail use of Air Force One and “entertainment allowances”.
The incumbent administration is likely to retaliate against those who admit they are not with him (Gallup, Adelson), why should any poll respondent make such an admission?
Response bias (intentional lying to poll-takers out of fear of reprisal or hope for advantage) must therefore introduce large error in poll results. Why should an ordinary person tell the truth to a stranger’s questions on such a sensitive matter?
Mr. Martin, I agree with you about polls. And, frankly, I am sick and tired of every news agency–even FoxNews–relying on such errant data for their political ‘discussions,’ as if the polls were accurate.
Many years ago, I realized that, regardless of what the results are, polling data is hogwash because there are SO many different ways one can skew them (confusing or inflammatory wording in questions, applying misleading calculations to the resulting data, and making assumptions about the data based on some bias). Then we must also take into account that the sampling numbers are often so tiny as to be impossible to make a generalistic claim about such a huge population based on so few responses.
If I’m going to marginally believe polling data, it’s going to be from the U.S. Census–which tries to poll the largest possible sampling of our population.
So, regardless of which organization is running polls, I refuse to believe the numbers; most of them have some sort of bias going on, and tend to try to skew poll results to satisfy their own political agendas. Can any one individual really BE “non-partisan?” Even Supreme Court Justices have trouble doing that!
Ultimately, it’s the election results, themselves, that will be tell the truth (assuming voter fraud is at a minimum this time). And, don’t even get me STARTED on voter fraud! LOL!
Fake polls, yet another violation of our rights. The gov’t constantly violates our rights.
They violate the 1st Amendment by caging protesters and banning books like “America Deceived II”.
They violate the 4th and 5th Amendment by allowing TSA to grope you.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting undeclared wars.
Impeach Obama, support Ron Paul.
Last link of “America Deceived II” before it is completely banned:
http://www.amazon.com/America-Deceived-II-Possession-interrogation/dp/1450257437
I think all these “Polls” are skewed! If they declare a 6-7 point lead now,they can then scream voter fraud when Romney has his landslide in Nov. Let’s remember polls, media, and all those people who churn out a book every year about how (the uneducated, unwashed masses), “we” are feeling about lives. Any politician over 50 and has served in Congress or Senate need to apologize and leave. Let the young guns, repub and dem(if they can get all 70 year old hippies to retire),make a case. The history among them has not poisoned there position.
Just as the polls are grossly skewed due to the audience being polled, I fear that an overlooked factor will be the Acorn-like voter fraud which the Democrats have been perfecting in the background for several years now. Anyone who will steal your vote would just as readily steal your livlihood and endanger your family. They deserve no better treatment than that of a sneak theif breaking into your home, and threatening your family.
A “reliable” poll had scott walker winning the recall election 50 to 45. He won 54 to 45. The pollsters can be trusted about as much as the rating agencies can be trusted for slapping triple A ratings on all the junk MBS underwritten by the big banks. And the pollsters happily accept the fees for churning out this crap.
I think the optimism here is a little overblown. Yes some of these polls are biased, but even Rasmussen and Gallup only show the race tied at best. Rasmussen has a poll out today showing Obama up by 12 in Michigan. and what about these ARG polls out today. Anyone know the Dem. breakdown on those. I hope they are skewed, because they look awful for Romney.
I’m trying to arrange to get “premium memberships” on the polls so I can look at the internals now.
The polls would need to be adjusted state by state. If one state has 45% democrat, 35% republican and 20% other then you need to poll them as such. Maybe a poll does have a higher percentage of democrats but if there are that many more democrats in the state then that is how they might show up to vote. Obviously, there are other factors, such as one party showing more apathy than the other.
Thanks for the Heinlein Razor reference. I musta missed that along the way.
I had never considered how easily polls can be skewed or worded to show favortism until I saw the polls used by President Clinton during the 1990′s. I was of from work and had to run down to Pentegon City Mall right outside the Capitol. Once inside this shopping mall I saw several polls being held and just looked at all the people standing in line to answer the poll. The next week I went back to return the item and saw the same thing.
It dawned on me later that the people being polled were all people that don’t work, have nothing to do, and should be at work instead of wondering around a mall window shopping. I thought how absurd it is to draw opinions of these few bumbs and make conclusions about the rest of the population on these idiot freeloaders.
I don’t think it is possible to run a poll that doesn’t lean one way or another, because no matter where you go you will be in a different group of people. I will use a hospital for example, we all get sick right;
Go to a regular hospital and ask all patients coming in how they like Obamacare.
Then go to the County Hospital where people are expecting free care and ask them how they like Obamacare.
The Hospital where people have their own insurance and are paying for their own care will tell you they don’t want it and it sucks. But at the County hospital where people go for free healthcare they will tell you it’s great.
Ask a bunch of freeloading idiots window shopping at a mall if they think they should get more handouts for not working and they will stand in line for hours to fill out the poll to get a free T-Shirt worth $0.50 and tell you they think they should get more money.
Take away the free handout and nobody will take the time to answer your poll.
So no, as I learned in Political Science Class while in College, you cannot run a purely unskewed poll, they will always lean how the designer wants them to lean.
But I tell you what, have I got a Poll for you. Ask every Business owner if they approve of our Government not passing a budget. Then ask the people getting handouts.
politico story providing romney with a 14 pt lead among middle class…
cnn exit polls provide that obama gained a net of 2pts from incomes between 30k and 200k in 2008. They were 77% of the electorate then, and the gw poll provide that they are 77% in their poll.
.14*.77=10.78% net gain from the demo for romney. don’t forget that obama loses that 2 pt net gain from 08:
based on the 14pt lead, alone, obama goes from a +7.3 in 08, to 5.5pt deficit.
romney, without undecideds, is ahead 53-47.
I smell a blowout. nate silver must be on his fifth pair of pants, today.
Which is, interestingly, about what the USP average has.
If you want to know who the true master of skewing polls for a living is then look no further than the genius of Frank Luntz. He has been working the words for years for the right.
let’s say we see Mitt is ahead of fØbama in the world famous Fluffernutter-Poboy poll by 3%. … then they admit, after being choked to near-asphyxiation that in this world famous F-P poll, the libs were oversampled by 81% … since Americans are soooo stoooopid, lazy, naive, undereducated, i think all polls reported in the media must carry the following warning labels (just like cigarettes and blintzes); sample size, sample arena, sampling dates, known sampling biases and/or irregularities, margin of error, … but that’s just me…
All of you spelling and grammar Nazis need to get a real life.
The first bias that enters all polling data is the method. For example, a poll based on telephone calls will be biased in favor of the older generation, who is more likely to still have a land line and the time to waste asnwering stupid questions from strangers.
Which bring us to the *second* bias – self-selection of the sampled population. Many ‘likely voters’ (like me) simply hang up on pollsters to protect their privacy. The polls have NO WAY to accommodate this demographic, because by its very nature it refuses to be characterized. They can only *blindly* assume that it would be similar to the population that does not self-select. That assumption is at best unjustifiable, and at worst sufficiently erroneous to disqualify the entire poll.
Nonetheless, the pollsters continue trudging on, trying like fortune tellers to tell the customer what they think the fool wants to hear.
They do not bother showing a break down of party affiliation when they do polls in Washington DC or New York City because independents or republicans are a rare breed in either city. It would be like doing a poll of CBS and New York
Times employees where you would show a party affiliation sample of D98 I1 R1.
The deck has been stacked for such a long time, and it is amazing that any party in competition with a democrat media advantage ever wins anything. The Dems are the urban party, and urban areas control the media which is a major advantage, nevertheless a distrust of media can also help the GOP at times. We can only hope more citizens are catching on.
So some website takes Rasmussen’s party I.D. numbers ( which can’t come from raw data as they are used to adjust raw data), and adjusts other pollsters results to come up with numbers more favorable to Romney than Rasmussen itself – who currently has Obama up by 1. Is Rasmussen then part of the conspiracy to make Obama’s numbers look better than they are?
For what it’s worth, Rasmussen and Pew were actually tied for 9th most accurate pollster in 2008. The oft cited Fordham analysis was later adjusted by the author when it became evident that Obama had won by 7.2%, not the 6.15% originally assumed the day after the election. Ras did do much better than Gallup, which was off by 4 points. Among those who pretty much nailed the gap were CNN, Fox and Ipsos.
The Buddha named fourteen traditional questions (the Avyakrita) that are not productive pursuits for those who desire Enlightenment. I’d suggest a fifteenth might be “are polls being skewed on purpose.”
As a fan of both Occam and Heinlein I long ago developed and here provide Aherne’s Razor: If polls were accurate, elections would be unnecessary.
I offer up Cousin Dave’s Electric Shaver: never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by narcissism. This comes in especially handy when dealing with the mainstream media and the Left.
Dear Cousin Dave, I wish you really were my cousin. I don’t talk politics with my cousins. Most of ‘em are lame-a** former-hippie or neo-hippie unthinking Democrat voters.
Thank goodness at least a couple of them probably won’t bother to vote this year.
Thanks, Mary! I’ll talk politics with you anytime.
Now that the pollsters have been outed, watch them start going the other way. The headlines from the news makers will be, “suddenly voters shift to Romney” or some BS like that. Then they will give 20 reasons to Wednesday why this is happening. Fox, we know you are using the same pollsters that WSJ/NBC and all the other liberal news agencies use. Show some backbone and start using “fair and balnced” pollsters. Idiots.
Charlie,
I agree with your general assumptions, however the beginning was a little rough . . . to wit:
Sometimes?
When an organization such as ABC or Gallup is persistently wrong, then you really do have to look beyond stupid. I’d guess that in many instances there is a cultural bias that intervenes to skew the results. It is the nicest way I can put it. The notably Democrat-leaning polls (e.g., PPP) should logically be the most suspect, but that is not been my observation. They have been wrong a few times this cycle, but no real doozies.
For example, we know that back in the comparable year of 1980, the four worst “late-breaking” polls were ABC, Gallup, Wapo, and CBS/NYT. The election was on November 4th and Reagan beat Jimmy Carter by 10 points. None of those “public polls” got it right.
One of the best late breaking polls that year was Richard Wirthlin’s Decision Making Information, Inc — “DMI” — a Republican outfit which was later sold to Harris. His last poll prognostication showed Reagan winning, and was only 1 point higher than the actual results. And even the “late” ones showed consistently high levels of undecided voters. The best guess that year, published on 11/3 was done by CSR (Cambridge Survey Research) polling for Carter, and showed Reagan winning by 10 — right on the mark — but still with a significant number of undecided voters. It was, by the way, a “one day” interview poll. Yet on 11/1 — after the one and only debate — CSR had done polling showing the race dead even with 8% still undecided. Go figure!
However, the well known public polls were in a few instances, wildly off. On October 30th of that year, after the one and only debate, the Washington Post published a poll (interviews on the 29th & 30th) showing that Jimmy Carter was winning by 4 points (43 – 39), with a large number of undecideds (12%). On 10/26 (the day of the debate), Gallup showed Carter up by 3 points, with few undecideds (3%) — 2 days of interviews. By the 30th, they had Reagan up by 1, and by November 1st, Gallup had Reagan up by only 3, with 4% undecided. Even Gallup never got close to the actual result.
But as we know, Reagan won by 10 over Carter. The polls that were most correct were the in-house polls conducted by the campaigns, NOT the well known public polls.
While public polls cannot be fully trusted, I think the pattern of ad spending and of candidate visit schedules is very telling.
For example, if PA and MI were really in play for Romney, they’d be airing a lot of ads in those states. But they’re not. (And it’s not as if they don’t have the money to do it). The candidates’ organizations, and the PACs, all have access to polls we don’t see, and if they even thought they were within striking distance, those of us here in the Philly PA suburbs would be inundated with candidate ads and attention and phone calls and knocks on the door, like four years ago; but none of that is happening this year.
In fact, there are only 9 states where this election is being contested, comprising 110 electoral votes, and Romney would need to win 78 of them to win the election.
If you don’t believe me, look at the spending reports published in the National Journal and do the math.
And that includes WI, which seems like a difficult pickup for Romney, and where it seems like only a half-hearted effort is being made.
If Obama wins WI, that means that he would only need 23 EV from among FL, OH, IA, NH, VA, NC, NV, and CO, all places he was able to carry in the last “real” poll four years ago.
That’s a tall order.
We won’t know for a while what will unfold by Election Day, but as of now, I cannot find cause for much optimism for Romney with what I am seeing.
Given the fact that there have been no debates yet, I’d say your opinion is clearly skewed. An incumbent President should be several points ahead in a solid lead by now. But Obama is a failed President with his economic policies.
Once the public has an opportunity to see and hear Romney in that first debate, they will quickly realize that this is not the person that has been painted as an extremist and out of touch, as he has been by the Obama campaign and their acolytes in the mainstream media. They will realize that he is an accomplished leader who has a viable plan for fixing an economy that has stagnated under a President who had no idea what to do to get it moving again.
And, who knows, with the obvious current collapse of the Obama foreign policy, maybe Romney will begin taking a lead before the debates.
I agree that the battleground is for the 100 or so EV. However, election fundamentals matter. There is a reason prediction models based on unemployment rates, etc usually are correct. What you want to see from the polls is at least some correspondence to tbe underlying fundamentals. All the rest is just spin. A reasonable hypothesis is that the current polls are oversampling eventual D turnout, and underestimating R turnout, since election fundamentals favor a mild leda for the challenger at this point, which is what you would get with conservatively adjusted data. Jay Cost hit the nail on the head–weak Dems got a bit more jazzed by the convention (and not as discouraged by 3 years of crappy news), and are answering poll questions as plus Dems and for O. However, when the time comes to go to the polls, a lot of them will likely not show up, since they are not as invested in the outcome. Can you honestly say any R leaning person is not strongly invested in the outcome? I still think R takes the majority of the battleground states (which despite 2008 are traditional R turf) and wins this like 305-220 or so, barring any unforeseen disaster.
Romney cannot win without Ohio’s electoral votes.
In Ohio as in Michigan, Obama’s bailout of GM is highly popular because of all the jobs in those states that are dependent on the auto industry. So far, Romney has not been able to come up with an effective response to what Obama did that would sway many voters in Ohio.
And that’s why I’m not placing any bets on Romney.
Yes, but most auto-industry jobs are with parts suppliers now, not the Big Three themselves. A lot of those companies do business with multiple manufacturers. Some of them do business with Ford, where there has been a huge backlash against Obama because of Ford’s having to compete with a government-subsidized competitor. (And being silenced by the White House when they ran ads pointing this out.) I would not take it for granted that everyone in the auto industry is going to vote for Obama.
Things at the Big Three are not as wonderful as Obama and the Mainstream Media proclaims it to be. Lots of people lost pensions, are doing the same work for less money and many more simply lost their jobs to younger folks who could do the job cheaper. Lots of people remember the good Romney’s dad did for Michigan.
A good case in point is the Delphi salaried workers. The federal government raided their pension fund and handed it on a silver platter to the UAW. (Which, no doubt, tithed a percentage back to the Obama campaign.)
All polling is suspect because the unemployed who cannot afford phone service are completely excluded from participating. I know several guys here who had long ago given up a home phone and more recently gave up their throw-away month-to-month cell phones because they are in some seriously tight financial straits right now. They had good jobs before Obama took office and blame him for not turning around the economy like he promised. They may not get to participate in polling but I guarantee you they will participate in voting.
Same thing for guys who are always at work. They are never home to answer phones for polling. And they are tired of being taxed to death to give money to able-bodied folks who are just as capable of working as they are.
You might think so but it turns out that many of the unemployed consider Romney to be the same type of corporate raider who cost them their job in the first place.
Obama is winning reelection. get over it my friend.
Oh, sure! And, I suppose next you’ll be telling us you just saw a chicken who could scratch algebra equations in the dust!
@Trochilus: OWSarean saw that chicken all right, but that’s not all he did with it…
All I know is that in the poll I took of one concerned American Romney is ahead by 100%.
And if there are 65 million more of you, you’ve got it made!
What the polls fail to count are the number of non-existent or dead people who vote every election for the democrats. The favored method of getting these people votes counted is by absentee ballot, early voting and bussing to different polling places in different counties and states. This is the real reason the democrats object to any enforcement of laws verifying the person voting is eligible to vote.
For what it’s worth, why don’t WE start our OWN poll, on everything of importance, and keep a running total over time? What, we can do that right now? Yes, we can! http://www.inations.com!
If you think we have it bad here with the media then I suggest you check out the FT article on Drudge about the corruption going on with the October 7th election in Venezuela. It would appear that whenever Chavez’s opponent is on TV the station managers are instructed to breakaway, and put on hour long documentaries about the greatness of Hugo Chavez, and all that he has done for the country. Mr. Chavez also uses the countries oil revenues as campaign funds.
My feelings are that if Hugo Chavez does not win in October it will be a very good signal that Obama will not win in November. The two races are similar in that Chavez has all the advantages with the media, and is a socialist who buys votes with oil revenues, whereas his opponent is pro-business, and has a great reputation in the businesss community.
In 2010, an analysis of 105 polls released by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, for Senate and gubernatorial races in numerous states across the country. The bottom line is that on average, Rasmussen’s polls were off by 5.8% with a bias of 3.9% in favor of the Republican candidates.
There is much to criticize about Rasmussen’s methods. All polls are conducted within a 4-hour window, the person who answers the phone (even a child) is sampled, phones that are not answered are not called back, and much more. All of Rasmussen’s polls are done by computer; live interviewers are never used. However, other firms that do robopolling such as SurveyUSA and PPP get much more accurate results with no bias, so the problem is not the robopolling per se.
Just to look at one methodological issue, if no one answers the phone, Rasmussen picks a different random phone number instead of calling back two, three, four or more times as other pollsters do. Why does this matter? Because 20-somethings (who skew Democratic) are often out, whereas 60-somethings (who skew Republican) are often in. By not being persistent in finally getting through to a randomly chosen phone number, the sample is inherently biased towards Republicans because they are easier to reach. This may not have been intentional but it is understandable if you want to finish your survey in 4 hours. Nevertheless, cutting corners in the name of speed and cost don’t improve accuracy.
With the possible exception of Rasmussen all polls, in my opinion at least, reflect the views of the person or persons paying to conduct and publish it. Further, the RCP average is simply foolish – as if averaging accurate and inaccurate accounting methods could produce accurate results.
unskewedpolls.com is brought to you by the good folks from GOP2112.com
Hard to take it serious.
If you want real numbers taken daily then watch Rasmussen.
Many of these pollsters have teamed up with the manure-stream media and are campaigning for our Failure-In-Chief. Not working.
I don’t think the polls are that far off. There are dozens of them done by different organizations representing points of view across the board. Some of them are more reliable than others, but in the aggregate, historically, they haven’t been that bad.
I think the real problem is what Lindsay Graham notoriously said: “The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
How can you expect accurate polling data from the traditional polling sources when the Obama administration bullies polling companies with inquiries from the Justice Department if the polling results are not to their liking?
i love how real clear politics average in a poll that is D+11. and D+7, that means they think that more democrats will show up at the polls than in 2008, laughable.
it was d+7 in 2008, it was R+10 in 2010, does anyone think its going to swing back a total of 20 points to the democrats??????? cmon
Here are 95 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, and cronyism:
http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/here-are-95-examples-of-barack-obamas-lying-lawbreaking-corruption-and-cronyism/
Just love how the left is crying and whining about thier boy.
His own actions are what are killing him and this is not reflected in polling
data.Sychophant media ho’s are just doing their best to seal the deal.
Got news for ya baby, it’s the economy stupid, not a poll.
Obama’s job performance is dismale and uneducated in the American Capitalist
system. He is a pathetic outsider who has done worse than Carter.
I did not think this possible. The more your shot at the more you are over the
target.
powder is dry
If a random sample is representative of the outcome to the degree it’s not cherrypicked. So if you get more D than R in a fair poll, that just means more D’s are voting. The re-weighted polls estimate the breakdown with the groups, not the outcome of the vote.
Polls are paid attention to when no one has any reliable information to report. In spite of the fact that some polled persons will deliberately not tell their true intention, and some others will really be undecided but not willing to admit it, while others maliciously will try to pervert the polls to their own benefit, the most reliable poll will ask the intention of the whole universe of potential voters.
Therefore the most reliable poll can be called the ask-whole of the universe while the smaller polls are just plain ask-holes.
Obama is a liar – he knew about the threat, 4.6 mil is only 3.1 mil unless you count the entire year of 2008, Romney is not giving any cut,
When obama talks it’s a lie -
he is just like Clinton (impeached/disbarred for what? Being a liar!)
Obama is afraid to even go on Fox – of course he is afraid to meet with World Leaders at the U.N.
10 days to realize that Benghazi was terror? Either they are all liars – or completely incompetent! Books and made for TV movies will be out before Obama understands.
4 years ago he was a junior senator, Hillary was a stay home mom, and Rice was a business person….
BTW – the new site is up http://www.legacyofsuccess.com
Remember – even if I talk my way into a Brain Surgeon job – I cannot claim to be a brain surgeon if I fail at every surgery!
Obama is a 1st term Junior Senator then…
We will get the government we deserve…We suffer with Mr. Obama because we deserve to suffer with this empty suite. He has one goal, and that is to turn us into a third world country, equal to his pride and Joy, Africa. Europe, Russia, and the USA are colonial racist countries and are about to pay the price for their sins. The American People are going to deliver the justice the rest of the World wishes on us. So shut up, vote of don’t vote, the Obamas, Romneys and their rich friends are going to take you where they want you to go……….straight to an insignificant country with little or no freedom, poverty for most, and riches for the elite.
May God have mercy on all the common people of America,………..North, Central, and South.
No incumbent president has ever won reelection with less than a 4 point lead this close to election day.
Here is another important statistic: No Democrat has ever won a Presidential Election without carrying at least 1 southern state. This means if OBama loses North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia, he will be shut out in the south and will have some serious problems.
OK, I’m not real proud of this, but am I the only one who has given insane answers to a telephone poll because they call during dinner?
Good point. And think about who is home all day receiving the phone calls. It’s the 47% who don’t pay taxes, won’t look for work, collect that government check, smoke pot, and won’t get off the couch to vote.
Your article is nice and much of it is right on target…but one sad ommission; the Independent Party of which the majority of voters (including me) are members. When called, many of us still (out of habit say “GOP”) as old habits die hard. But all you have to do is visit the Indie Voter facebook page or twitter stream and you’ll know that most are voting Democrat this time. We have a few fairly good candidates; and Jill Stein is capable but entered too late; not enough know her, hence a wasted vote. And of course the military wouldn’t vote Romney/Ryan if you paid them (and of course you’d HAVE to pay them (if they’ve been in 8 years or less) because they are “moochers” to Obama/Ryan; and they need the money. They’re all voting for Obama. It’s great to “keep the faith” and I salute you, but why kick a dead horse. Bob Dole, who was a decent candidate knew when it was “all over” as did we, and he bowed out gracefully. This is going to be the biggest laughing stock election in history if Romney/Ryan stay in. They simply will not even come close. I truly wish I could say otherwise, but just be thankful they aren’t going to win. When the GOP regroups after the death-dive, I suggest we go back to a normal candidate such as Huntsmann who easily could have done the job; and probably beat Obama….but he’s not crazy/fringe enough; and most the party does not believe me how important it is to lean left just a little; to get a little closer to the center;; right now it is much further right than Atilla The Hun on Steroids.
With a comment like that, I understand why You call yourself a cartoon.
So you’re saying: most voters are independents, most independents are now Democrats, military personnel will vote Democrat. What data do you base this on? Because right now, I’m the one laughing. Our Tea Party will silently, efficiently, effectively vote our men in, like we did in 2010 and in state elections. That was a real nice try at influencing people. I love how most Democrats say, “Oh, I’m an independent.” The Far Left Party will continue to use tricks. And our Tea Party will laugh it off as we feed that voting ballot into the machine.
Funny… I see more hard left Dems identifying themselves as “independent” this election cycle than ever before. You are no different.
The rhetoric they all use is the same.. “Huntsman (a dead give away), Obama landslide, Romney: bad candidate etc etc”
Is this the Dem”s strategy this cycle? Fill the discussion boards with lefties posing as independents?
Oh, you forgot to mention the internet betting site that has Obama’s odds of winning at 70%….or the intrade site that shows Obama by 70%…
grasping for straws
“Even as Obama leads in Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Virginia, Mitt Romney is up by double digits among veterans in those states. Nationwide, he’s got a commanding 20-percentage-point lead over Obama and has even overtaken the president with younger veterans.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81616.html
Hello, America’s Politico. Aren’t you about out of socks?
I’ll just say this: You are wrong about the Military vote. Very, very, Wrong.
Wow, these comments really examine every possible theory. Good job, guys! Oh, except for one theory: the theory that the polls might not be wrong. You don’t think it’s possible that Mitt Romney is just a really bad candidate, and an inferior politician?
Now let me make clear, I’m not a democrat. I’m a true down-the-middle independent. But as an observer of politics, observing Romney as a politician, I think he’s really, really bad at it. Nothing against the guy personally, but he’s just made a total mess out of a golden opportunity. I agree with most of the posters here, that this SHOULD be a Republican landslide election cycle – but Romney is bungling it. Badly.
Now that white voters are down to only 73% of the electorate, and married white voters may actually be down to less than 50% of the electorate, the GOP can never win a landslide again–unless it figures out how to appeal to large numbers of blacks or Hispanics.
The GOP used to just write off the black and Hispanic vote, and concentrate on getting a big majority of the white vote. That worked in 1980 when whites were 88% of the voters. Now they’re only 73% of the voters.
Do the math. To get a 51% majority with white votes alone, Romney would have to win 51%/73% or 70% of the white vote. That would be a better performance with whites than any previous GOP candidate, ever.
By the year 2040, whites will be down to only 60% of the electorate. At that point, the GOP will be unable to win elections with white votes because one-fifth of those whites are liberal and won’t vote GOP.
tvm
wrong,
instead of the correct “I caught 3 different kinds of fishes” – fish is singular and plural.
When you are snobbishly correcting someone, at least be correct yourself.
Using Obama’s final margin of victory to decide how many democrats and republicans there were in 2008 to compare to the party identification spreads this year is comparing apples and oranges. In the final Gallup poll before the 2008 election, Gallup found a spread of 12% in registered voters , 10% for likely voters. Voter identification and margin of vistory are two different things.
My opinion: I want Dems to have the irrational over confidence that they have now.. even with the skewed polls they are overly confident that Obama will win. I am having a hard time finding ANYBODY that is going to vote for Obama. I know people that talk like they support Obama, but there is a 70% chance that they won’t even make it to the polls. On the other hand, 90% of the people I talk to are 100% sure they will vote, either to vote for Romney or vote against Obama. Americans are not stupid… they see what Obama is doing to America and want him out of office. So the less Obama supporters that vote, the better I like it.
You’re lucky, because nearly everyone I know is voting for Obama.
Who cares about polls everyone knows they are skewed. Who has ever changed their vote due to a poll or decided their vote based on nothing but a poll? There is only one true poll and that is in Nov. Till then with all the rest consider the source and remember people lie and polls are as scientific as sociology.
The only way all these polls showing 0bama ahead of Romney considering the current state of our country is if the American people have completely gone off the deep end. I am 48 and anyone around my age or older has NO excuse not to see the parallels between now and 1980. How anyone could vote for 0bama is beyond me and I’m not saying Romney is a great candidate either, I’ve got plenty of problems with him. But those problems are minor compared to what 0bama is doing to this great nation. We will NOT survive another 4 years of 0bama. I believe that most of these polls are in the tank for 0bama, and I hope and pray that the American people see through this and Romney wins by a landslide. That would put these polls out of business and egg on the Press’s face.
The country has NOT gone off the deep end, but demographically it’s a different country than it used to be:
Smaller percentage of whites, much larger percentage of Hispanics. (Hispanics are the fastest growing voting group in America.)
Fewer married, lots more single. (Single women are the second fastest growing voting group in America.)
Gays are significantly wealthier than average Americans.
The GOP is not only unable to appeal to these voting groups, but in the case of single women, it goes out of its way to denounce them. The GOP holds up the married stay-at-home mom as a role model, and tells American single moms that their unwed motherhood is bad for their children. Then the GOP shouldn’t expect all those tens of millions of single moms to vote for their candidates, ever.
It’s the same thing I’ve told the Left: Don’t think you can shame Americans into voting for you.
The GOP has to make it clear that blacks, Hispanics, single moms, gays and lesbians, are all welcome in the party. That is, the GOP doesn’t just want their votes, it wants to address issues of concern to them. No one should be chased away.
You are only perpetuating the myth that the GOP is run by the Catholic Church, which is actually a lot more home in the Dem caucus. The Left is not the “rainbow coalition” they paint it as. A lot of blacks hate gays. A lot of blacks hate hispanics. A lot of hispanics hate Communism. A lot of communists hate jews. A lot of jews hate blacks. These are not groups with a common agenda. That’s why Obama has to vote Present all the time, even as CHIEF EXECUTIVE. That’s why it took so long to come out with his pro-gay marriage “stance.” That’s all it is: a stance. He knew it would tick off the black voting block. Why he is having so much trouble with mid-east policy: he wants to appease his jihadi friends, but also doesn’t want to lose the jewish vote (which is the most mysteriously loyal Dem block there is). And let’s stop using the code words “Women’s Rights.” They are specifically talking about abortion. Whatever. But the idea that single women (ie, Condi Rice) are not supported by the GOP, well that’s just stupid.
I have never understood why ACTUAL registration data is not used. It is not difficult to get the actual data on Republican vx Democrat vs Independent registration. Why not use actual numbers rather than “self identification”? The other problem with these polls (all of them) is that none of them take 2010 into consideration.
1) Not all states register by party, and
2) Many people cross party lines when they vote.
Using that data is just as useless as any of the other “models”. None of them are reliable. Using recent self-identification data is probably the least bad of the bad methods.
Ha Ha! Complain all you want about polls. Romney is losing because he is a terrible candidate (how bad must a candidate be to be losing to Obama this year!?). Romney can’t keep his stories straight — he has no opinions — no one likes him and no one should.
Pollsters have been dead-on for elections since Reagan-Carter (and even there it was clear why they were wrong by so much — a very late debate changed the balance, and there was international politics at the last second).
Romney better hope for a bump in the debates — that or a world crisis that he manages to handle better than Obama this time.
oh-oh. here’s the unskewed poll from oct 1.
http://unskewedpolls.com/dailytrackingpoll.cfm