The Five False Assumptions Behind Poll-Skewing
For poll-skewing to be effective, all five of the following hidden assumptions about human psychology must be true:
ASSUMPTION #1
• When a person sees that his team is in second place, he gives up and stops fighting.
Perhaps I’m different from everyone else on Earth. Maybe I’ve got grit that everyone else lacks. But when I see myself behind in an ongoing competition, I redouble my efforts in an attempt to win.
But I don’t really think I’m different at all. I think most people react exactly as I do. In fact, personnel managers often rely on this common behavioral trait to motivate employees by pitting them against each other and then implying to each one that if only he tried a little bit harder he would surpass all the other employees and win the promotion. The end result is that each employee, thinking his promotion is in danger, works more energetically to achieve hoped-for victory.
Here’s an example. Let’s just say that in some battleground state Obama and Romney are essentially tied in the raw polling data, but in an attempt to “depress the vote” among Romney supporters the media and partisan pollsters intentionally skew the results and announce that Obama is actually up by three points. What would be the group psychology consequence of this false announcement?
The Obama partisans assume that Romney supporters will see the false Romney-is-losing poll results, get discouraged, and say to themselves, “Gee, looks like Romney is going to lose. There’s no point in voting for him. I give up. I’m not going to vote on election day.” And then Obama really would win by three points.
Now to me, that would be a bizarre and unlikely reaction. I would assume the exact opposite — that the Romney supporters would become unnecessarily alarmed at such a poll result and as a consequence would fight harder for their candidate: “Gee, Romney is trailing at the polls: I’d better go volunteer at the campaign office and make sure all my fellow Republicans vote with me on election day to help Romney pass Obama at the finish line.” And the consequence would be that Romney won by three points.
So: We have two competing assumptions, one (held by most Democratic strategists) that skewed poll results will discourage opposition voters, and one (held by me) that skewed poll results will energize opposition voters.
Surely, there is some evidence, some study, supporting one assumption over the other — right? Well, as far as I can tell, no, there isn’t. For this entire campaign season I’ve searched in vain for some kind of verification that the unquestioned assumptions underlying the “depress the vote” strategy are even true. But no one’s ever done such a study [Note: see update below], and I doubt any strategists have ever spent two seconds questioning their assumptions about mass psychology.
And how would such a study be conducted? It’s not like a pollster can ask voters, “If your favorite candidate was actually ahead in popularity, but the only way you could know this fact was from the results of polls, and if then a pollster like me intentionally lied and told you that your candidate was actually losing, would the deception work on you and cause you to become discouraged and not vote at all?” I’d imagine that the pollster would get a punch in the nose rather than a well-reasoned answer.
But if there’s no data to support the assumptions behind the “depress the vote” strategy, then who’s to say whether the assumption is correct? Simply because more people have that assumption? And how do we prove that? Do we take a poll of people about their group psychology assumptions? “Do you assume that falsely distorted poll results will depress votes for a candidate or energize his supporters?” And what if those poll results are themselves skewed? Where does it end?
And so we come to an astonishing conclusion: That thousands of campaign strategists for decades have been operating on an assumption that has never been confirmed, and that for all anyone knows the exact opposite could be true — that poll results skewed against a candidate only end up energizing his supporters and increasing his final vote tally.
It’s not about influencing the election, it’s preparing for the aftermath. Skewing for Obama gives them:
1. in the event that Obama wins, they trumpet their predictive genius while their guy keeps running the country into the ground (but looking stylish and ticking all the right political correctness boxes while doing it!)
2. If Romney wins, the gap between the polls and the outcome gives the outcome an appearance of impropriety and stoke the flames of Bush v. Gore once again. Alternatively, the clash between the overly optimistic polling samples and the actual population that votes will be used to impute racism to Republicans for turning out with such “unexpected” fervor.
Further, it gives them room for fraud, since they can steal 3-5% of the vote with no one being the wiser.
Money!
The one who appears to be winning gets more “campaign contributions”.
The Republican big donors are intimidated by Obama’s Justice Dept.’s lawfare against Romney’s supporters: Adelson. The Democrats big money donate to Obama for a big payoff for their “investments”: Stimulus.
The denial of reality regarding polls that do not conform to what the right already wants to believe is strangely similar to what we see with terminally ill patients in hospice or nursing facilities. Patients who are terminally ill go through what many refer to as the Five Stages of Grief or the Kubler-Ross Model. It plays out like this:
Stage 1: Denial – this isn’t happening, it isn’t real, I will not accept it. Denial is a defense mechanism and some people can become locked into this stage (as evidenced by the comments on this board).
Stage 2: Anger – this can’t be happening to me. This isn’t fair. What did I do to deserve this? In this stage people become hostile to others and see them as the object of their misfortune. Irrational behavior and lashing out, even at loved ones (who may be voting for Obama), are to be expected. Treat them with love and kindness. Stroke their forehead and tell them how the warm milk of the Affordable Care Act will make their last days pleasant.
Stage 3: Bargaining: in this stage reality has begun to set in and strategies are devised to inhibit that reality from ever taking place. In some ways it can be viewed as a feed back loop to Stage 1 in that bargaining transitions back into denial. Generally individuals in this stage often engage in heavy negotiations with their higher power to buy more time or to facilitate a different outcome.
Stage 4: depression generally follows when the pleading to the higher power goes unanswered. Acceptance of the situation sets in. This period allows the dying person (or the one losing an election) to disconnect from things of love and affection (or goals such as winning). It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. They need time and space to process what is happening.
Stage 5: It is what it is and I can’t change what is happening. Time to prepare for reality.
I would say that what we are seeing right now with regards to the trajectory of the current Presidential election is a combination of stages 1-3. And the stages can vary from person to person. Romney, the candidate himself, seems to be in Stage 3. The reason being is that his team knows very well what the internals are indicating. These stages are just a general template. Often people never leave the first and second stage and die (or lose) bitter and in pain.
Man, have we reverted to the ancient Internet cliché of the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief? I haven’t seen that trotted out since about 2004.
When we speak of “denial,” we are referring to people who try to ignore that Obama and Romney have essentially been in a statistical tie within the margin of error for months now, and will likely continue to be until election day.
Rasmussen? Hmmm, you are most certainly in Stage1. LOL.
Rasmussen = morphine
Realclearpolitics composite = reality
Metanalysis pools errors as well as data. An aggregate of garbage is still garbage. This is elementary statistics. http://library.downstate.edu/EBM2/2700.htm
The RCP average uses polls with very different methodology and assumes the answer is somewhere in the middle. It won’t be. The 5% of voters that swing every election are influenced by atmospherics and tend to fall heavily on one side or the other. I’m not predicting an outcome but there is no way a scientific poll should have a margin of error these polls have. People are too irrational and there is too much noise.
That’s all possible, but you don’t address the arguments made in the article. The author has given 5 logical reasons why the polls are meaningless. What evidence do you have to the contrary?
We desperately need some education on polling people…
A pollsters job is to take a snapshot of the electorate for a certain time period. They call a limited number of people in a state, match their demographic data with census info to construct a realistic mix of the populace, and then report their findings. If a poll shows that democrats makeup 30, 40, 50 percent of that electorate, than that’s part of the poll’s findings, that’s not something they know going in to the poll, and its not something they should fiddle with at all.
There’s this belief that pollsters are calling a majority of democrats..that’s not how it works. They call people randomly, and then those people say who they affiliate with.
I want a Romney win too, but we don’t need to bash pollsters, we need to discuss how to beat Obama…
I realize I’m late to this ‘party’ but one guy who watches polls (Mike Barone) has commented that only 9% of those contacted are finishing the poll. So which portion of the people contacted do these 9% really represent?
I mean when 90% refuse to answer the poll, that brings to doubt the validity of the poll.
Further, if Romney wins by a narrow margin with controversial counts a la Florida/Bush-Gore, the ONE can declare the election void.
Far-fetched? With the present narcissist-in-chief I just don’t know…
Intrade (09/28/12) has President Obama with a 78.6 chance of winning re-election. This isn’t a poll. It is savvy people placing bets. I don’t recall the last time they were wrong. That said, all the wingnut whining and hand wringing is entertaining.
You’re missing the point of this post.
The issue being discussed is not “Who is winning in reality?” but rather “What purpose is served in promulgating the impression (true or not true) that one side is winning, and what psychological assumptions underlie that purpose?”
Even if it is a fact that InTrade (foolishly or not) responds itself to the skewed polls, why are you so sure that advertising that fact would be helpful to your candidate Obama? Are you trying to induce complacency in Obama voters, or is that simply a side effect that never occurred to you?
You’re probably one of those who will never leave Stage 1.
Obviously InTrade responds to the polls. A more interesting question is how much would it cost for a campaign to place bets on InTrade to skew the odds not for profit, but for publicity that InTrade favors them?
Perhaps it is done to cause strife in the R camp, which appears to be working.
Just a heads up, Donnie. Cynical Wonder was never in the Republican camp. But I am in camp and we will defeat this Communist dirt bag in November and you can take that to the voting booth with you. ABO2012
Intrade shmintrade:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2931134/posts
Isn’t that the same Intrade that gave a 90+% probability that Obamacare would be ruled unconstitutional?
And that was the day before the ruling!
Intrade had it around 80% that the SCOTUS would overturn some portion if not all of Obamacare!!!
If Obama wins, we shall know that polls can be manipulated not to reflect public opinion but to influence it. Shameful.
If Romney wins (by Providence), then the liberal spinmeisters will blame the defeat of Obama on:
1. racism
2. voter suppression
3. GOP PAC money
I guarantee it.
I have anecdotal evidence that #2 is true. I have a few Progressive friends that crow on social media sites about Obama’s lead in the polls about swing states. However, I knew they value their vote and will likely participate in elections though they don’t live in a swing state.
Also, agree with AZ above that this will be used later to suggest that “racist” state officials obviously suppressed the Obama vote since the the polls didn’t agree with the polls. The polls are reality, the election is some random event that should match the reality.
“The polls are reality, the election is some random event that should match the reality.”
Last seen in 2004 when the left decided Ohio was “stolen” because the exit polls disagreed with the vote count.
Exit polls are even easier to rig than the regular kind. Send your pollsters to “friendly” precincts, seek out those who appear to favor your side (in the case of Democrats, that would be minorities, hippies and dead people).
Even more important, exit polls by definition ignore everyone who voted early or absentee.
– I just didn’t want the rest of the country to wind up like San Francisco or California. But if Americans have become as dull as Northern Californians, then there is nothing to be done except leave the country, which we will be doing if Obama wins.
Sometimes you leave the country, sometimes the country leave you.
–
I live in Kalifornistan where Big Brother Obama is going to receive at least 101% of the registered voters, so what the hell can I say about polling?
I should point out the obvious, that if the ballots are counted the same way the polls are compiled, by which I mean as bogusly, then well there we are.
It takes a concerted effort by a Radical/Islamist-in-Chief to destroy the hope that so many Americans – as well as others – have for a nation such as America.
In fact, the damage he is wrecking is a calamity of historical proportions, and will be irreparable, if elected to another term.
Therefore, at least half of America’s citizens hope/pray to change the POTUS in November – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/20/americans-hope-to-change-the-occupant-of-the-white-house-an-anti-american-potus-runs-an-un-american-campaign-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
America’s – and the west’s – fate hangs in the balance.
There could be another way. Enforce states rights. The Red states go one way and the blue states go another. It is abundantly clear this president and his banking masters has divided this country into two pieces. There are those who believe inthe constitution and natural law and you have others who do not.
Many of us will not be ruled by a tyrannical group of progressives who believe this land is theirs to do what they wish. They want to impose oppression over others because they think they are the superior interlect.
We will need to stand fast against those who wish to rule by fiat and not by we the people. We are entering very dangerous times.
“Surely, there is some evidence, some study, supporting one assumption over the other — right? Well, as far as I can tell, no, there isn’t. For this entire campaign season I’ve searched in vain for some kind of verification that the unquestioned assumptions underlying the “depress the vote” strategy are even true. But no one’s ever done such a study, and I doubt any strategists have ever spent two seconds questioning their assumptions about mass psychology.”
Actually, there is. Naturally, I can’t currently find the link, but it was linked from one of the conversations with John McLaughlin over at NRO. Even some research to back it up; don’t know if the research is “quality” or not.
If you can find it, please post it here in the comments. It would be useful to have some red meat to chew on!
The only NRO/McLaughlin article I can find is this one: http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/327982/what-john-mclaughlin-sees-polls-right-now — but he doesn’t present any evidence about the veracity of the assumptions behind depress-the-vote strategies. He just notes that they are being enacted.
I searched for it; I think it was a different source than McLaughlin, but I do know I commented on it elsewhere…
AHAH!!!
Found it. On HotAir:
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/24/the-bandwagoneers-part-ii/
I am consoled by the fact that that article is from 1998, when people trusted the media. According to Gallup, trust in the media is at an all-time low- at only 28%.
So there is a much greater suspicion of anything they have to say (especially if it’s a media-backed poll)- if people are listening at all. Also, there is a recognition that the media skews left. I don’t have the exact poll figures for that but even liberals recognize that it happens.
All of these things can cancel out the Bandwagon Effect.
To some degree, yes. But my own opinion is that the Dems are scrambling to avoid a blow-out this year, and which segment of the population says they trust the media most?
Dems.
(Also, while I remember a couple of times focusing on identifying and avoiding propaganda techniques in grade school, it doesn’t appear to be included in modern curricula.)
(Also, while I remember a couple of times focusing on identifying and avoiding propaganda techniques in grade school, it doesn’t appear to be included in modern curricula.)
But if schools taught how to identify and avoid propaganda, that would take vital curriculum time away from teaching susceptibility to (collectivist) propaganda….
OK, now we’re getting somewhere. Or are we?
That HotAir article leads to an intermediary page which eventually leads to this page: http://www.kaaj.com/psych/abstract/pollsabstract.html — which summarizes the study. But the summary in no way explains how the results were obtained.
Finally, that summary leads to a pdf of the study itself:
http://kaaj.com/psych/articles/polls.pdf
RIght now I’m too busy to read the whole thing, but if anyone wants to devote time to it, please post summations and reactions here!
Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to digest it.
Thanks for pointing the way!
Zombie,
Last page in your .pdf file, the authors conclude that a sudden unexpected event (favorable or unfavorable) plus Bandwagon effect and frequent reporting can have a ‘cascading’ effect (my word, not theirs). a stampede the herd kinda thing.
Ed Driscoll : Preference Cascade
http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/06/03/preference-cascade/
Or as it was once stated:
Be a smarty, join the Nazi Party.
I am afraid that the polls are the magician’s hand doing the flourishes, while his other hand slowly palms the mark’s watch.
4 years ago we heard a lot about ACORN’s voter registration drives. ACORN was corrupt and is no longer in business, but my expectation is that the same crooks are doing the same thing, just more quietly.
Nixon didn’t fight voter fraud in 1960, despite winning the popular vote, and despite voter fraud in Chicago and west Texas. That was a bad precedent.
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
“Nixon didn’t fight voter fraud in 1960, despite winning the popular vote, and despite voter fraud in Chicago and west Texas. That was a bad precedent.”
I remember hearing Nixon say that he did not want to create any chaos by challenging the obvious voter fraud. He knew it would tear the country apart and he loved the country. Unlike Gore and his minions that swarmed into Florida. There are sore losers out there that still bring this up even though there were more than a half dozen nonpartisan groups that recounted the votes after the election and found that Bush won handily in all the challenged precincts.
“The end result is that for every Romney voter who stays home because he was tricked into thinking his vote will be futile in a sea of Obama votes, there may very well be an equal number of Obama voters who stay home because they were incidentally tricked into thinking their votes are unnecessary since Obama will win in a landslide.”
There is a big difference however: The Obama voter that got stoned and stayed home will be voted for by the people in the vans or the people with the stacks of absentees. The communists know that the Republicans have no effective or meaningful vote fraud machinery and the Democrats live on vote fraud, so no Democrat will stay home, whether they know it or not. Those poll watchers will be crossing off every voter and when it gets late in the day, the fraud vans will fire up and vote for as many who haven’t voted as they dare and the rest can be made up with fraudulent absentees/challenged ballots.
Don’t be so vividly depressing!
We need van-detector vans.
Every Democrat will be given an absentee ballot or given a van ride to the polling place. This is Standard Operating Procedure. They will vote no matter how complacent they are. The Republicans? Not so much. Who wants to wait in a 2 hour line to vote for someone you know is going to lose? Obama voters get free stuff after waiting in that line.
And I am not convinced the polls really are deliberately skewed. Part of it is Republican leaners who are too scared of retaliation by their bosses, unions, or associates so they refuse to talk to pollsters. Part of it is an enormous gender gap (25 points in Ohio!!!) that is putting a heavy Democratic tilt to the results.
It really would be helpful, after the current election cycle is over, to post the data for the various polling companies not on their margins Obama-Romney over the past several months as they compare to the eventual final results, but their D/R/I numbers over the campaign cycle. It would be interesting to see if some of the polling companies that have had +9, +11 or even +13 Democratic samples in the weeks out from the election — where there’s no quantitative way to prove that their samples aren’t accurate — suddenly end up with samples far closer to the actual Election Day D/R/I split once we get near Nov. 6, because that’s the only poll that can actually be corroborated or disproved via the real vote totals.
“There probably are some people who are so shallow, so obsessed with social maneuvering and so despicable that they will side with the perceived majority in any situation, even if it entails utter hypocrisy and moral vacuity.”
They are called Liberals. They follow the herd, not out of reasoning, but because they are only comfortable in the herd. It is why logic and reason bounce off their thick skulls, because to accept the truth would force them to leave the herd. Very scary!
The skewed polls lean Left. This is how they think, because these are the people with whom they surround themselves… other herdbeasts.
The question is not, “Does it affect those on the Right?” It’s, “Does it affect the mushy middle?” Do they follow the herd? Doesn’t seem so, but that could be, because they generally take no interest in politics until the last couple of months. If they think they might jump on the Right’s bandwagon, do polls which show Romney losing discourage them from doing so? They might. Some folks just want to be on the winning team. It might not be a lot of people so discouraged, but the Left fights for every vote they can get or deny to the other side. It all adds up.
And they’ll use any dirty trick to get control of those votes. The Left fights dirty.
(And no, this does not mean the Right should also fight dirty, because we then become them, and there is then no point to it all. Our scum versus their scum? No thanks.)
Doesn’t there come a point where we have to fight fire with fire?
The Left will always fight dirty but if we don’t stand up to them then what are we doing? Clean hands won’t save us and they won’t save this country.
I have to think there are better ways to stand up to cheaters than to cheat in return. One advantage honest people have is that their activities can stand up to scrutiny. Let the daylight in, and we shall see what we shall see. That is why voter fraud prevention is such a good idea, and why it is so strongly resisted on the Left.
The polling in Florida has influenced me. Until a couple of days ago I didn’t even answer the phone when I suspected pollsters. I now answer and have responded to an automated poll.
Now the strange thing is that I was talking to a friend in North Florida yesterday evening. Independent of my resolve to respond to polls, she has done the same because of irritation with the polling. She also received a poll yesterday. As soon as she said she was sure she was voting for Romney they hung up, she told me.
My North Florida friend is on a mission to get all the people in her small town to register Republican. Most had been registered Democrat for no better reason than their grant-grandfathers were registered Democrat. They would likely all vote Republican no matter how they were registered. We do not believe the polls. But all they are doing is motivating us to work harder for Romney.
As a Swing State Voter who’s been deluged by polling I have taken to lying to the polls.
Should I be male or female? Hmmm. They probably take the female vote for granted, I’ll be Male.
Should I be caucasian or minority? Hmm. They probably take the minority vote for granted, I’ll be Caucasian.
Should I be young or old? This is tougher. They would probably be working to pump up “all age brackets”.. I change my “age” at random.
In the end I want goof the poll so that, eventually, they will think they’re winning. Personally, I’ll save the truth for the “poll” taken on November 6.
I thought about lying about age and party affiliation. I didn’t. Maybe next time. Automated call, I would only be lying to a machine.
Deep thought of the day:
If you lie to an inanimate object, does it count as a lie?
Did Isaac Asimov give us any guidance on that one?
No.
Asimov books are full of paradoxes contradicting his own “laws”.
Only if it dreams of electric sheep.
Don’t be a Dick. (Unless you are really good)
How could the inanimate state of something else transform a false into true?
Ah, but you see, the concept of “a lie” does not involve merely truth or falsehood, but rather the promulgation of truth or falsehood to a sentient being in a social environment.
If I tell a child that “1+1 is 3,” I am telling that child a “lie” that will mess up its mind.
But if I’m all alone in a space suit floating a billion miles from the nearest galaxy with no life forms in hearing range, and I whisper to myself, “1+1 is 3,” I wouldn’t say that it counts as a “lie,” which has a moral/social implications, but rather as a morally neutral “factual falsehood.”
Only if the Liar believes the Object believed his inanimate lie.
Lying to a comatose patient seems somehow different than lying to a half-empty bottle.
I’ve sometimes been lying as a comatose patient with a half-empty bottle lying by me…
@CptNerd
“I’ve sometimes been lying as a comatose patient with a half-empty bottle lying by me…”
Zing! LMAO! Best laugh I had all week.
I always say that either I voted for McCain, or I’m registered Republican.
Again, anything I can do to screw with their math is on the table.
I consider it the moral equivalent of a POW lying to his captors.
Mandatory reading Gustave LeBon – Group Psychology.
Now I’m off to join the local Sarcastaball team.
I have actually seen the Band Wagon Effect actually work, it does exist. Perhaps it works better in person to person environments such as the party convention where the two candidates are similar. The candidate with the better cheerleaders who can get more people up out of their chairs and dancing in the aisle gains votes. Of course there is also the grumpy old skeptic, the one who refuses to join the group because of all the hoopla.
So..all, most, many, some of your assumptions paint with too broad a brush. Human behavior covers a broad spectrum, and is both fickle and obstinate, easily manipulated and not, principled and rudderless. Ya, I get discouraged, get mad, start over, give up, try it again, believe, disbelieve…the whole spectrum, but then I’m manic/depressive, so there you go.
So why do campaigns do it? They don’t want to lose, and they will do, say, try ANYTHING, to win.
I agree with you that human behavior is on a long spectrum and it’s impossible to say that “all” people will do this or that.
But if that caveat applies to my article, it equally applies to the poll-skewing strategies, and I sincerely doubt anyone has ever quantified the expected percentages of the populace’s psychological responses.
E.g.
“If we over-estimate Obama’s polling numbers, then our research reveals that
12% of likely Obama voters will become complacent not vote after all;
26% of undecideds will jump on the perceived bandwagon;
48% of likely Romney voters will roll their eyes and scoff at the results;
39% of likely Romney voters will become anxious and work harder for his victory;
13% of likely Romney voters will become discouraged and not vote;
…”
And so forth.
In the absence of such reliable projections, it’s all random guesswork based on anecdotal evidence, which is the whole point of my article — the strategists are working in the dark, and yet they don’t seem to even realize this fact.
Just to add a further factor to your considerations, why should any of those numbers, even if they were determined, be static? In other words, if a thorough study that was done today showed conclusively and to a high level of certainty that 15% of conservative voters would not vote for the conservative candidate if he seemed to be losing in the polls, whose to say that the number wouldn’t change upwards or downwards in the next election? Or over the course of 20 years. Or 50 years. Isn’t that one of the problems with the current obesity scare? Didn’t someone point out that “normal” weights for given heights had been determined in the 1930s during the Depression when most people were undernourished? Yet we used those same “normal” weights until very recently as if they were valid for all time.
And why would the numbers be uniform for all states and areas? Maybe some cities and states do a better job of convincing people to vote (for somebody/anybody) and people in those areas would vote while people in other areas might be less inclined to show up at the polls. In that case, a number like 15% might be only 5% in a more “civic-minded” area and much higher in another area. And wouldn’t “civic-mindedness” tend to change as the school system changed? So mightn’t the numbers of people who would vote regardless of the polls change over time?
I could go on but I think I’ve made my basic point.
However, unlike conventions, or show-of-hands votes, or football games, or dance floors or bridges to be jumped off, no one actually sees who you vote for and the actual process of voting is both time-consuming and boring. One can nearly as easily claim to have voted for the victor without going to the effort of actually voting. I think that the Bandwagon Voters are far more likely to simply claim to have been involved than to put the effort into actually being involved.
Gosh that was a great article Zomb. But now I’m confused. I was going to vote for Romney, but up here in Michigan it looks like he’s lost, but maybe he isn’t, but he could be, but I think he has a chance, but I have personally turned 10 people away from Obama and into our camp, but I”m not sure about the other 9,047,653 Michigan citizens and what they might do, but if his roots mean anything he could win, if the people who have swung to Romney from my on the street survey he could do it, but maybe not, I think Detroit will go Democrat, maybe, well probably actually, Lansing is no shoe in, Now what? vote…not vote….vote…note vote….vote….not vote. Geez.
But if……..
When ifs and buts become beer and nuts we will all have a wonderful party. Vote Romney.
One reason to be glad there are less than a million people left in the corrupt cesspool that is inner city Detroit.
I can see why you are so persuasive! Rock on, you have inspired me!
I think people who are likely to vote Republican, are less likely to have time to take a weekday afternoon phone survey.
The only poll I trust is Rasmussen. I thought Gallup was OK, but its recent poll showing O ahead by 6 does not seem plausible.
Jack,SilverSpring, I’ve read many times that Dem results go up a bit in over-the-weekend polling while Repub results are higher during the week.
Dems are unemployed and have no money to go out on the weekend?
Dems are stunted emotionally and can’t get dates?
Not sure, but they appear to be spending “quality time” at home on weekends. And answering the phone.
With cellphones so common, why do you assume the poll responders are at home?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think most if not all pollsters only call landline phones, for some arcane reason.
If true, that is a major failure (if not a skew) that pretty much renders polls irrelevant. Millions of people now have no landlines; they use cell phones only. And their numbers are increasing. Do the no-landline people break one way or the other politically? If they do, how can anyone know which way they break since pollsters never contact them?
There’s something I like to call a #2.5, which is related to #2, but with some modifications.
#2.5 – People either abstain from voting or vote for Obama because their family and friends have Alinsky’d them (Browbeating, insults, demonization, accusations of racism/sexism/stupidity/evil, threats of abandonment) into doing so.
The few libertarian-to-conservative friends I have left all have in common that their left-leaning (or even supposedly ‘undecided, apolitical) friends have demonized and abandoned them, and many of them are distressing over it, worrying that if co-workers find out that it could ruin their job status, etc.
They also tend to get sick of being mocked over their concerns when it comes to socialism, black bloc anarchism, and political islam. Many of them just want to stay home and give up, so they bullying will stop.
Why don’t they just do what I have done since 9/11?
Publicly profess either the same mild liberalism I had my whole life prior to 9/11, or (depending on who I’m talking to) a complete disinterest in politics – -but once inside that PRIVATE voting booth, vote Romney anyway?
Once doesn’t need to vote in private according to the dictates you receive from Alinsky bullies in public.
Zombie, Your strategy may work in STEM departments, but not in the humanities where non-leftists are “outed” and consequently denied tenure.
Why would anybody want to be friends with bullies like that? My advice- get them a book on Christians enduring persecution. That should give them some perspective.
My dear cyberfriend Zombie…you simply have not yet received your decoder ring and the Instruction Manual on the “Leftist Use of Poll Data for the Ovine, the Bovine and the Slo-Vine”
The Ovine—(aka Sheeple)
The Ovine Poll Data Skewering Code is an attempt to take “issues” and “questions related to those issues” and create a kneejerk reaction wherein you paint your hated “enemy” as evil, then ask the sheeple if they favor evil or goodness. If you are having trouble gathering the “correct” outcome, just make a few “random” calls into area codes filled with “the right kind” of sheeple. If enough sheeple all say that they “hate evil” in answering your shepherding question, it influences other sheeple to flock together. Peer pressure being what it is, this has a flocking effect.
The Bovine Poll Data Skewering Code. Unlike sheeple, bovine characters tend to stampede, not flock. This accounts for a seemingly incongruous leap from last week’s numbers to this week’s numbers. Causing the herd to stampede is done by coyote, wolf, puma, …any predatory “tracking” animal.
A “tracking” poll intended to stampede the herd in Ohio or Florida is used to scare the bovine creatures into racing blindly to “safety”. Obama and the Democrats can boo God, slap Israel in the face, skip intel briefings, leave embassies and consulates in imminent peril, and cause gas prices to soar…but, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are going to kill grandma and hate children, teachers and minorities…”Run for your lives!”.
The Slo-Vine Poll Data Skewering Code, is the whispered rumors, (whispered with a lisp in the case of Harry Reid, “lispered”) that something “nefarious” is afoot with Romney and Ryan. “I can’t reveal the source, but trust me, it’s so evil it would curl your toes”. The lapdog media then runs with the non-story…or the fake story of “Stench” or that a YouTube video caused al-Qaeda to predict the future.
The Ovine, Bovine and Slo-Vine Poll Data then regurgitates back precisely what the leftists and their lapdog media want it to ….and Voila! You have the Poll Data Dance Party.
It worries and demoralizes the opposition…who think their message is not being heard or understood. It pumps up the Boo God Party, who were suffering a massive enthusiasm gap. It shepherds and herds the “me too’s” who are on the fence…to inside the corral.
It’s all part and parcel of the Propaganda and Lies Ministry Dirty Tricks. If you don’t call them on it, they win. If you call them on it, but don’t prove it, they win. So, let’s break their code.
Well here’s a thing Zombie.
You’re not writing about about polls and stuff becuase you think it’s an intellctualy stimulating subject; you’re a partisian in the trenches, fighting the good fight. The fact that you chose to write this right now shows that you’ve got a pretty strong belief that every one of those ‘false assumptions’ about why polls matter is bang on true. In fact I probably doubt them more than you.
But I’ve got to ask, What skewed polls? Go read Charlie Martin over the way on the subject: short version ‘polls that find more people will vote democrat have over sampled democrats and the proof of this is that they find that more people will vote democrat.’
I think its the opposite and the methodology bears that out- they are looking for a certain percentage of democratic voters (the 2008 version and sometimes higher!)… who reliably are vote democrat, and hence getting many Obama votes.
Simple question- do you think Obama is equally or more popular today than he was in 2008? And Democrats in general? Because that is the only way to explain weighing the polls with a large Democrat voter lead.
Now you are free to believe what you want, but here are two pieces of evidence that are working against you- one, 2010. Republicans kicked the crap out of democrats, which would be odd if our nation is now staunchly Democrat.
Two- Rasmussen has been tracking party affiliation for many years. In 2008 he had Democratic affiliation at +7 vs Republicans. Obama won by 7. In 2010, he had Republicans up 1.3%. Republicans took over the House and won 6 Senate seats. As of August 2012, he has Republicans up +4.3% over Democrats. Same poll, asked the same way, month after month, year after year.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/partisan_trends/summary_of_party_affiliation
So how do you explain those facts, if indeed the country has the same or more percentage of Democrats than it did in 2008? We wont even go into the fact that Obama was selling out arenas back then and has half empty halls now.
Thanks Mark. Mainly I was saying that they seem to be making up reasons for claiming that the polls are flawed, rather than ponting out, as you did, that they think the polls just look wrong.
Probably worth a closer look as you sugest though.
Careful. The claim is not that there are more Democrats now than 2008. The claim is they are more among Likely Voters. This is possible if the report I saw of a 25 point Gender Gap in Ohio is true. That could easily put Obama up by 10 points.
Nemo – Zombie has put forth five claims. I think if you can confirm or refute them, that would be interesting. For me, what counts is how close is the poll to the actual result, and here Rasmussen can’t be beat.
This is well stated. There is little reason to believe that the polls will affect any significant number of votes cast once they are in the polling booth. Its between you, the stylus, and god at that point, im not sure just what benefit you get with the ‘in-crowd’ at that point. And I do think there is good reason to believe that there are a significant number of voters that may say they are Obama voters, perhaps even intend to vote for him, but when it comes time wont be able to pull the lever. That may be ESPECIALLY true if they believe he is going to win anyway (perhaps a personal ‘F-You’ to Obama for dashing all the hopes and dreams). So tiny protest votes in a fait accompli wont betray your party… unless of course millions of voters behave the same way.
Much more importantly, however, is the behavior we do have evidence for. Republicans voters are more consistently reliable to show up at the polls. Thats a fact, largely due to older voters (who vote much more reliably) skewing republican. What does that mean? It means that more Obama voters are liable to stay home because they think their guy has got it in the bag than Romney voters who are going to vote no matter what. This is even more damaging to Obama because the exact demographics that got him his big margin in 08 (and allowed the skewing of these polls) are statistically the least reliable voters- young people. So not only are not nearly as many young people going to turn out as in 08 (because of their nature, they are difficult to get to the polls), but even LESS of them will likely turn up BECAUSE of how many turned up last time… thereby skewing the current polls… thereby making them think their votes wont be necessary. Phew.
Yes you’ve got republicans are more reliable voters so
+Republicans
But democrats like Obama more than Republicans like Romney
+Democrats
But republicans dislike Obama more than democrats dislike Romney
+Republicans
So in the end its probably hard to say about turn out.
True enough. Election might hinge on if it rains in Cincinnati on election day.
“Election might hinge on if it rains in Cincinnati on election day.”
In Ohio, rain favors Republicans regarding voter turn out.
I am getting worried that here in Austin I have yet to see a SINGLE Romney bumper sticker or yard sign. Yes I know it’s liberal here… but not a SINGLE one and I have a long commute from outside the actual city.
Are people scared to put them on/out? I know I am. I park on the UT campus; I’d probably have my car destroyed. Anyone else noticing the same?
Even the Dem pollsters have written off Texas as a sure thing for Romney. Nothing to worry about.
You are in the #1 liberal enclave in the state. Aside from Austin, the black neighborhoods of Houston and Dallas, and a certain percentage of the Hispanic vote, the state is going overwhelmingly for Romney.
I know, but when I moved here 9 years ago, plenty of people still had Bush stickers on. I really think conservatives are kind of lying low, scared of liberals.
What you say? Come down to Houston and say that.
There isn’t a chickensh*t liberal in the World I’m afraid of. I am however reluctant to have some mind-numbed lefty punk key my Mercedes because it obviously marks me as one of those evil productive citizens and a Romney sticker would enrage the punk just like insulting the pedophile enrages similar idiots in the MENA.
Bush was from Texas (though the son of a New England carpetbagger). That made a difference.
From PA here, eastern region where typically 52:48 D:R. No yard signs for either candidate. Its still early.
Bumper-stickers though I have seen. 10x as many anti-Obama as there are ‘Obama 2012′. I’ve seen no Romney bumper-stickers. So far, 90% of the cars I see with ‘Obama 2012′ are driven by African Americans.
I think people are tired of politics on both sides. Things are so disfunctional in DC that it begs the question, “why bother”.
Still, I suspect D turnout will be very low, while R turnout will be moderately high. Not as high as 2010, but higher than typical. Most of the Dems I know have no enthusiasm for Obama. They may not vocalize it much, but they know he’s a failure. Hard to see them making much effort to get to the voting both.
If Romney/Ryan rock the debates…which they should…this will be a landslide.
South Central (leaning Eastern) PA here. All the Obama stickers are on massive gas-guzzling $50,000+ SUVs here.
Funny how that works.
They’re counting on Obama making their car payments for them in a 2nd term. Call it an “SUV bailout.”
I think this election overall has much different feel than last time. In 2008, people still weren’t feeling the pain of the Recession yet. The last election was still more like a sports event in a your guy v. my guy kind of way, and it still had that kind of feel to it. This one is much more serious and desparate. People are miserable, scared and hurting. This time it’s a lot more serious. That’s why I think you’re not going to be seeing as many yards signs or bumper stickers in general, but don’t mistake that as a lack of enthusiasm or interest. I think it’s just a reflection of the overall tone and mood. Stickers and signs seem somehow … inappropriate.
Don’t go by stickers and signs. Almost no one puts political stickers (of any type) on their cars anymore. There is always some cop who won’t like it and he will be guaranteed to pull you over for the slightest infraction. Speed enforcement is way way up from 4 years ago. And even if you don’t speed, a cop will pull you over and give you a breathalizer, just in case. It is not worth putting ANY controversial stickers on cars. Nothing political, nothing of major national sports teams. I’ve noticed that most cars with stickers have just the classic junior/high school sports league crap that no one objects to.
Yard signs tend to get stolen or defaced. They are going up late this year, and the numbers are less because of retaliation fears.
One other point, even if all of this is weak, if your election prospect are slim to none then you play the cards you have.
The left isn’t using the polls because they think it will work, it’s because they have to use the cards they have in their hand
“If anything, Obama supporters seem to lap up and internalize the “Obama will win effortlessly” meme far more eagerly and unquestioningly”
Shhhhh. They need to keep that up – of course Bambi will win. No need for his supporters to bother going to the polls ….
The problem is, the bandwagon effect is real.
An example, if your school has an awesome football team, the stands are full of spectators. If they suck, no one comes (even though you could make the point that more SHOULD come for the added encouragement)
An anecdote, I had a Republican friend who didn’t vote in 2008 because he said “it was clear it was over”. He just didn’t want to bother with it. I’m not wired that way, but plenty of people are.
The liberals clearly have an agenda, discourage us so we don’t vote, don’t volunteer, and don’t donate. We need to push back twice as hard, but I think conservatives would be foolish to ignore what the liberals are doing with MSM polling.
“it was clear it was over”
IOW, I’m not that enthused about McCain, anyway. I might hold my nose and vote for him, but I am not going out of my way for him.
This time it’s vote or die. The only best chance we have is to vote. I saw it that way in 2008, and I held my nose and voted against Obama.
Re: Assumption number 5.
Pew is often cited as having got the 2008 election results correct in their polling but that was only in their very last poll. All polls prior to that showed Obama with a much greater lead than he actually had. Rasmussen is the only poll I trust right now for data but I do trust Gallup for TRENDS though not the spread.
Gallup’s final poll had Obama+13 in 2008 which was 6 points high.
I would say that the net impact of false polling isn’t in changing people’s vote, the impact is on the campaigns themselves and the finances. Lets say polls show a certain trend. Now suddenly a poll is release that bucks its own trend to show a candidate suddenly losing support in a state. It might cause the campaign to waste time and effort verifying that result or possibly even reacting to it. So you might cause a campaign to waste resources where they are not needed. I believe the poll skewing is meant to mess with the opposing campaign than with the people.
It can also impact donors. If it is very late in the campaign, would someone be more or less willing to part with their hard earned cash if their candidate is polling -6 points (even though they might be tied?).
“I would say that the net impact of false polling isn’t in changing people’s vote, the impact is on the campaigns themselves and the finances.”
I don’t think the campaigns see polls anything like the public ones. I suspect they pay more for better accuracy AND expect accuracy. The press pays less and expects a “good” story from the results.
The Donors see only the public polls. And I assure you, if you think your guy is toast, you won’t fork over any of your own money to him.
It sounds like that’s what happened in 1984. Loads of finances into California based on polling that was simply flawed.
Those polls weren’t flawed, they were deliberate lies. Another recent article here linked to that fact. WaPo editor Ben Bradlee proudly called it an “in-kind donation to the Mondale campaign.”
Yeah, polls schmolls. Get up and vote.
Still, a couple of points in sympathy with the tin-foilers.
There are polls being bandies about that have D+11 or whatever when even in ’08 the particular area of the country only went, say, D+5. Clearly, this is _intended_ to have an effect even if _we_ don’t see why it would/should have an effect.
Nobody ever claimed that progressives were math- or logic-centered, right?
Also, there are enough of these puzzling polls to give an impression. And the impression I have is that there is a sort of 2012 version of RatherGate going on (make a completely non-credible charge and then stick with it in the face of overwhelming evidence). The difference from ’08 being that the numbers of coordinating groups/pollsters and their collusion has reached an order of magnitude increase. It’s not just Dan out there on his own anymore, they’ve got a whole gaggle, like Journo-List.
Or, it could be coincidence.
Or, maybe Obama is wildly popular and we just live in a bubble.
But, ya know, I am grudgingly going with collusion of the media and some selected pollsters even if I don’t know why they are doing it. Remember when George Stephanopoulos asked a random question from way out in left field that became a Dem talking point some weeks later?
These guys are up to stuff. All the time. Even if we don’t know why or what, at the present time.
ps. None of it matters. In the end, get up and vote.
You’ve left out the sixth reason. Depressing the polling for a candidate depresses the contributions. Think of last year’s run up to the primaries. As each of the contenders became the leader in the race to be the anti-Romney, their contributions went through the roof. When they did something to damage their position, the money dried up. Why not assume the skewed polls are an effort to control contribution levels, and thus the candidates ability to advertise.
Your analysis is unfortunately naive. You should start off focusing only on the small number of truly undecided voters, so points 1,3 and 5 are nearly irrelevant. As for 2 and 4:
An undecided voter, nearing election day, hears a story on the (liberal, of course) news about a speech that Obama gave, or a series of positions laid out over a few days. The voter thinks this sounds pretty good to him. (No substantial information is provided about Romney lest he decide he likes that even better). The talking head immediately follows that up with a casual aside that Obama’s poll numbers have risen during the same time period, providing affirmation to the voter that he is likely in the moral majority with his reaction. His move toward Obama is solidified.
Furthermore:
#1) Undecided voters by definition don’t have a ‘team’.
#2) Undecided voters are by definition not worried about which ‘crowd’ they are in. Most people do, however, want to see themselves as morally correct, which can be influenced a little bit at a time as described above.
#4) You don’t have to actively follow the polls to be aware of poll numbers.
#5) Two possibilities that make reputation concerns moot: 1) polling with a smaller firm or doing it in-house. People don’t really care if NBC’s poll numbers were 5 points off because that’s not the product they consume. 2) Like the broader liberal editorial bias in newsrooms, if everybody’s doing it it doesn’t look like anyone is doing it wrong. Shoulders are shrugged and vague explanations are made ex post facto, and everyone is absolved.
Interesting counter-points! Thx.
I was an election judge for a bond election back in the 90′s. This blind guy came in to vote so 2 of the judges (me and one other) went into the voting booth to help him vote. I read the questions to him (“shall taxes be increased by 10 million to pay for …”) and his reply to all 10 questions was “Well, that sounds like a good idea!”. It was pretty obvious that he was here to do his civic duty regardless of how much or little he knew.
Yeah, but I doubt that there are many truly undecided voters anymore. People may be undecided about whether to bother to vote, but not who to vote for. A few voters are simply undecided about who they like the least.
Good analysis. I’d say that there is one clear benefit to poll skewing: it projects an image of strength. This is something generally you think of with dictatorships, the need to project strength and to avoid any show of weakness. I guess this is the same in our country now.
For example, I can’t remember a single time when Obama, George W Bush or Clinton had an acknowledged minor illness when in office, like a flu or cold, though certainly each must have been sick at least a few days.
“Pollocracy” has already been coined by someone on these pages, and it needs to be repeated and defined. For one: pollocracy is the attempt by media organizations to predict, demographically define and hence, influence the outcome of elections.
Furthermore, the success of a pollster is the correct prediction of an election at least just before the ballots are counted. Before that time, error cover is a given as statistical anamolies, the change of events, or the fog of politics (which is redundant).
Computer generated analysis is voo-doo science (a normal anamoly disguised as an oxymoron). Even the ballot box is a best guess.
Thank you for reading my post (this one, to be precise). Since I coined this particular sniglet and have used it in other forums, I reserve the right to define it. Therefore, a pollocracy is simply a system of government where opinion polls rule. Of course, no such system actually exists, so it’s used to lambaste the notion that polls actually mean anything in the real world. Hence my link to the 1948 election and the famously wrong Chicago Tribune headline. I have also mentioned here a 1995 poll indicating good support for a school bond referendum in a Florida county — which failed by a 3-to-1 margin.
To be fair, the polls in 1948 were not biased in Dewey’s favor. From what I’ve been able to research (1948 was well before my time), the screwup was due to two factors:
1. The Dewey campaign, seeing all the favorable polls, assumed the election was in the bag and coasted the last few weeks. In sports this is known as “reading your own press clippings” and is often a harbinger of defeat.
2. At the same time, the pollsters also decided Dewey had it locked up and stopped polling.
As a result, both the GOP and the pollsters totally missed the impact Truman’s frenetic whistlestop campaign tour was having.
Again, watch what the candidates are doing.
Why is O still going to FL, OH, IA, VA? If he has double digit leads, should he be trying to expand the field by now?
Why are there inklings that O is thinking about ad spending in PA? Why, if he’s up by double digits?
So, Dems, if these polls are so great, why isn’t the O campaign using them?
There will be a great gnashing of gov. teat sucking teeth when Romney & Ryan Win (and win BIG). lolz!
HA! There will be a great gnashing of gov. teat sucking teeth when Romney & Ryan Win (and win BIG). lolz!
spot on … I actually think the reason we are not seeing alot of ads in Pa. is because the internals show Romney crushing Obama … I have a house in rural NE Pa. and can guarentee you that the NOBAMA crowd is very very active while the pro Obama voters are rare as hens teeth …
things we do know …
the youth vote will drop significanlty from 2008 …
some of the youth vote will shift to the GOP …
the senior vote will rise vs. 2008 …
the senior vote has been shifting to the GOP (Tea Party, Stimulus and ObamaCare) …
the Catholic vote will shift significantly (HHS mandate) …
African American priests are actively suppressing the AA vote for Obama …
add that all up and Obama is toast no matter how skewed the polls are …
PA will not be decided in the rural areas. It is the Pet and Cemetery vote in Philadelphia that will control the outcome.
Another thing that this could acheive is to drive the tacitical 3rd party voter to vote for their preferred 3rd party candidate on the assumption that the election will not be close and they can “send a message”. Or drive the weakly-aligned “hold my nose” voter to just stay home. Winning presidential campaign are necessarily combinations of various voting blocks, some strongly supportive, others more weakly. As with negative adds, bandwagoning hits the weakly aligned hardest. If you think a larger % of your voters are die-hards, why not encourage the rest to stay home?
From an Obama perspective I doubt they think they have the more dedicated core votes (how could you when you rely heavily on the youth vote?). But there are a number of significant Republican groups that are ambivalent about Romney (anti-Mormons and libertarians in particular) who might be willing to deny Romney their vote to send a message – think of all the folks who sat out 2006 – particularly if they can be convinced they’re not pulling a Nader.
Don’t forget the obvious — cash.
These campaigns have hopes to spend about $1 billion each. Spent on what? Ads. Who is trumpeting the polls? The people who will be paid to broadcast the ads.
Why pay for ads if you are absolutely convinced you will win?
Regarding assumption 1….isn’t “I think most people react exactly as I do” an admission of sorts? Wouldn’t say, 97% (as in 97% of people would redouble their efforts and not get discouraged/stay home) equal most people? And yet, if 97% don’t stay home, the implication is 3% might. So in your formulation, “I think most people react exactly as I do” and “And then Obama really would win by three points” are really saying the same thing.
Same with Mark Buehner above, who says “There is little reason to believe that the polls will affect any significant number of votes cast once they are in the polling booth.” They don’t have to discourage a lot of people – in a close election, only a few will do just fine.
Yes, but you’re leaving out the fact that the 97% will campaign harder and do “get out the vote” efforts among their friends and relatives, which will undoubtedly more than cancel out the 3% who get discouraged.
For the poll-skewing to work, the depression effect need to outweigh the energize effects.
Zombie you magnificent bastahd!!!!
My thought on #1 is a bit more jaded. My Libertarian and Conservative friends are doers, fighters, winners, they would react as you would, redouble, get after it, get er done!
The liberals I work with (deep in the belly of SF) would react just the opposite. Ooooo….its gonna be hard….why bother the system is rigged anyway etc.
I’m in Software, I work almost entirely with Liberals and I am AMAZED at how often, after laying out the work I hear “gee…that sounds really hard, do we have to do it?” Pathetic.
CuriousKevmo/
Ahem, Zombie is a “she”–but your heart is in the right place, lol
Zombies, being undead, are its, not he’s or she’s.
Zombie’s a she?!?!?! Did I miss a memo? I gotta get on that internet….I’m late on everything.
There’s a serious cognitive dissonance ‘lol’ factor going on, Zombie [regarding polls and proles haha].
A. Even non-conservative websites have people disenchanted with 0bie One Doobie Kenyan.
B. The vote ‘early and often’ crowd are the typical Acornites and they do NOT represent the majority by a f*cking long-shot.
C. People with two brain cells to rub together (and not on ‘DA DOLE’) will want to watch some real debates happen before they vote (I hope R&R vet that mofo poser in the WH like he should have been vetted in the first place).
Ohhhhhhh… I say, “GAME ON!”
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There’s a serious cognitive dissonance ‘lol’ factor going on, Zombie [regarding polls and proles haha].
A. Even non-conservative websites have people disenchanted with 0bie One Doobie Kenyan.
B. The vote ‘early and often’ crowd are the typical Acornites and they do NOT represent the majority by a f*cking long-shot.
C. People with two brain cells to rub together (and not on ‘DA DOLE’) will want to watch some real debates happen before they vote (I hope R&R vet that mofo poser in the WH like he should have been vetted in the first place).
Ohhhhhhh… I say, “GAME ON!”
Dewey or Dewey not think the Truman will win?
/sorry, gang, it’s an irresistible impulse.
When the pollsters are on the spot they often ask,”What would we have to gain from producing less than accurate information?” There is something the prObama pollsters get even if they are not actively promoting Democrats. That is exposure. Putting statistical propriety aside, the pollster looking to make a name knows that +Romney polls will be buried while +Obama polls will get them on TV.
I think that what we are seeing is an example of the Left assuming that those on the Right will behave in the same ways that they would. The Left firmly believes that skewing the polls would work against their side, so surely it would work against ours. Why try it if they didn’t hold that belief?
What they fail to understand is the difference in mentalities between significant portions of the two sides. In the most simplistic and general terms, there are Takers (Democrat base) vs Producers (Republican base). The Takers could very well stay home if they thought they were behind. By virtue of being a “taker”, I can’t imagine them having the will and determination it takes to overcome an ‘insurmountable” challenge. They’ll fold and stay home.
Producers, on the other hand, thrive when faced with a challenge. This is their element. They’ll roll up their shirt sleeves and work doubly hard to right the ship and cruise to victory.
They’re shooting themselves in the foot with this tactic. Time will tell…
Good insight.
Don’t forget that the left has very credible (in the sense that they actually hold the same positions as the the majority of Dem voters) 3rd party candidates like Jill Stein. The equivalent on the right could be Johnson, but there is nowhere near the same percentage of Republicans that would overlap with the Libertarian party as Democrats with the Green Party.
Um….I just tried to say the EXACT same thing further up….but I didn’t do it nearly as well as you did.
Another interesting piece by Zombie (as usual).
There are polls and there are polls. I think Rasmussen is the most reliable and in fact they did accurately predict the results for the 2008 presidential election (I think the split was spot on). So I do watch that site and have become increasingly concerned to see Obama widening his lead in swing states.
For me, it matters not whether my team seems to be winning or losing regarding how I will work for a campaign. Emotionally, it’s a lot more fun and energizing if it looks like we’re winning. But my perspective is that we must always bust our buts in every election because it’s not just about impacting the election results, but it’s also part of a broader process of shifting this country back to some semblance of sanity and that is going to take a long long time and a very concerted effort on all of our parts.
And lastly, I do think that the blind allegiance people seem to feel toward Obama is something relatively new and that the fever pitch of the media has reached an all-time high. Those factors, among others, have me very concerned about the election outcome and the future of this country.
But, like I said (sorry to be so long-winded), we must do what we must do every single day from now to election day, and beyond. No matter who seems to be winning and no matter who wins.
based on recent polls showing Romney winning Independents 60% – 40% the party affiliation on election day will have to be this for Obama to win:
Dems 38%
Indy’s 34%
GOP 28%
Thats D +10% … it was D +7.6% in 2008 …
Rassmussen has the latest party affiliation at a R+3 ish … I don’t think we will see a 13 point swing in the next 40 days …
Hmmm … maybe if every single Republican suddenly outed themselves as demons?
Finally, someone has spoken with reason. In this election, even if there is no one to vote for…there is someone to vote against. It’s only logical. The majority no longer believe the media. The ones that do have prove, through the evidence of their current condition, that they don’t possess the motivation to persevere in the face of adversity.
Conservatives have proven they possess this characteristic. All conservatives I know will vote. I will vote. We believe we’re at a crux. It’s obvious to me, through observation and conversations with those that profess liberal beliefs, that they do not perceive this and are just not as motivated as I am.
Conservatives, who don’t believe the media, will ignore it. Liberals, who do believe the media, will act on that belief. I think skewed polls work to the advantage of Conservatives because conservatives aren’t herd beasts…they adhere to a belief system that is under siege. This suggests to me that the tendency will be more to opposition than complacency.
I see a blowout and I don’t usually make predictions. I’d be much more worries if it looked like Romney was walking away with it. Why? Conservatives, in my experience, are much more predisposed to thinking “Things will work out”. It takes something to get their attention.
In the big picture, bad polls are far less scary than four more years of Obama. That’s all the motivation Conservatives should need.
Expect the polls in the last week or so before the election will be as accurate as they can make them, because the last ones are the ones that the majority will remember, not what you said in late September.
As far as assumptions go, yeah, you are right, they are all assumptions. Even if they were ONCE valid, there’s no guarantee they still are. Things change every day, but one thing that does not is human nature. I think every election is basically a referendum on the previous 4 years. Even 2008, which did not feature any incumbents, basically became a referendum on the Bush years. This will be a referendum on the Obama years. The reason is that people basically look in the rear-view mirror. The mutual fund industry depends on this – even though they note “past performance is no guarantee of future results” they know people are going to be swayed by past performance so they talk it up if it was good and focus on something else (the new fund manager, the sector’s performance, whatever) if not.
So no matter what anybody says, Nov 6 they are gonna go into the voting booth and ask themselves “Do I want another four years like the last four?” The answer to that question will determine whose lever they pull.
One comment on polling was something Hugh Hewitt named “The Florida Effect” back in 2000. When Florida was called for Al Gore, even though the polls were still open in the panhandle (in the Central time zone), people working at phone banks reported that all the energy was sucked out of the room. Also, attendance at the polling places dropped off.
People believed that their vote no longer mattered in Florida.
Of course, “The Florida Effect” depends on the population believing the person who reports the poll numbers, and maybe this belief has taken a bit of a beating of late.
The same thing happened on the Left Coast in 1980. Once word spread that the networks had called the election for Reagan, many people standing in line at polling places (presumably Democrats) turned around and left. Supposedly that affected the result of several state & local races.
The Democrats’ re-election strategy… fake it ’til they make it!
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
–Joseph Goebbels
This polling fraud of overweighting democrats has already resulted in no small amount of angle biting on Romney by Republicans and so called Republicans. This can only help Obama.
It seems clear to me that there will be plenty of people who will not vote if they think their candidate is well behind. Not only will they figure “What good will it do?”, but if they vote, figuring their candidate will lose, it’s like rubbing it in. A whole lot of people don’t like having it rubbed in.
Nil Desperandum, Feral.
Spend the weekend reading Thomas Carlyle’s “The French Revolution”. It’s on Amazon, for free. Imagine that! We live in an age where the wisest and most valued analysis in the history of the world is at our fingertips…for free. Yet, we remain stupider than the merest slugs.
It’ll either cheer you up, or you’ll jump off a bridge. How can people be so stupid, blindly repeating the same fatal mistakes over and over? Maybe it’s because they’re blind to reality, and it might be embarrassing to acknowledge it. Or perhaps the NFL Ref controversy has them distracted. Or, they’re idiots.
But, fear not! All will come back to rights. A couple hundred million may die, but rest assured: things will ALWAYS come back to rights.
We primitive types call that concept…GOD!
Not to mention His Dep’t. of Irony, which is truly a bitch.
NEVER mess with the Dep’t. of Irony.
If I ever get to Heaven, I’m applying there, first. They must really have them some fun, at the Dep’t. of Irony!
Florida 2000. Need I say more?
The Democratic strategy: Hoodwink American into voting more for them by lying, then when there’s a violent backlash at being snookered sic DHS (and their zillion rounds of ammo) on ‘em, then ban guns and declare conservatives a “rightwing extremist” threat to be rounded-up. Presto– “social justice” comes to America! (Be sure to vote Democrat for your free phone like the rest of the 47%!)
I think you overlook another reason for poll skewing. In doing so, it gives the media a hook for stories about how futile Romney is, which they hope (probably correctly) will percolate into the culture at large. What they really want is punchlines on the Tonight show about what a feeb Mitt is.
Of course, that will have no effect on conservatives, or even moderates with brains (if any such exist). But the mindless middle probably is influenced by these impressions. And that may help the Obama campaign.
Right. It only has to bandwagon a couple of percent in a couple of swing states. And in this case it also helps to support the rabid hate and distortion which is the heart of the Obamanation – they would do the same, even if they were damn sure they were losing by 20% just because they can.
Bingo. The point of the skewed polls is to create the widespread impression that Romney is a loser. And as Patton said (in the movie anyway), “Americans love a winner, and they will not tolerate a loser.”
The more the pollsters and media drill home the idea that Romney is an oaf, a buffoon, a clown, a joke … the more they can influence wishy-washy voters who are driven by emotion and crowd psychology. People who are dumb want to seem smart. If they think voting for Romney makes them look dumb, they will not vote for him.
And yes, I think it is working.
Sheep need someone to tell them what to think.
With all the little lambies around today, why is the price of mutton at record highs?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Ok, folks,
Not to scare anyone, but after reading the article and a good portion of the comments, I feel the necessity to provide a true story about voter fraud and its real impact on a major election.
Back in 2003, I was one of the few Conservatives still living in California. Back in November of 2002, Governor Gray Davis (D) had somehow been reelected to a second term in office–even though he’d been suspected by the local Lamestream Media in several corruption scams and/or schemes, and many folks suspected that either Davis was completely inept at his job or he was completely corrupt. If either one had been true (the evidence was there; no one did anything about it), he should have lost his reelection bid. Even the left-leaning newspapers published evidence of the governor’s corruption; but of course, they STILL endorsed him for reelection!
As is practice in California, counties are permitted to test ballot samples against submitted voter registration data as an investigation into possible voter fraud. Well, one county (King County, located in southern California) conducted such an investigation, testing 10% of their ballots against voter registration information. The results were startling: The county found that 37% (over one-third of votes!) of submitted voter registration information contained either fake addresses or the name of a deceased voter–making such registrations fraudulent and supposedly invalid (yet they were used to allow someone to vote!).
Even if we assume that only SOME of California’s remaining 57 counties had similar results if they were to test their voter rolls–and most did not–there would have been strong demand by citizens for a state-wide investigation.
Incidentally, Governor Gray Davis won his reelection bid by 20% of the vote! Is it any wonder that a concerned group of citizens petitioned to recall governor Davis in 2003? And they WON! Unfortunately, though, Californians voted in another inept character in Arnold Swarzenneger.
But, can you all see how important it is to get voter fraud under control?
My personal opinion is that the polls are fairly worthless and that there is no way that Obama will be able to maintain the level of support that he enjoyed when elected.
As part of the anyone-but-Romney crowd, I was not pleased that he was the Republican nominee. However, after the Supreme Court Obamacare fiasco I determined control of the Supreme Court by Leftists would doom the country in the future. So I accepted Romney and my opinion of him has gone up quite a bit over time. The selection of Ryan was a big plus in my book. But I still don’t know if he has the guts to do what the country needs.
However, my loathing of Obama/Biden/Holder knows no bounds. I think that we are rapid approaching the point of no return for our economy. I am actually scared about the future for the first time in my life (I’m 51).
I am motivated to do something to stop the leftist movement. So I will vote Romney and I am actually contributing money to his campaign. For the luke warm conservatives that believe the polls, I tell them the MSM is corrupt and they should read conservative sites for truth and liberal sites to see what the enemy is thinking. I have actually distributed lists of links to what I consider the best sites for information. When I talk to liberals and they talk about how wonderful Obama is, I try to mention the latest, stupid, ridiculous, and damaging thing that he has done. Then I look forlorn and shut up.
In trying to make sense of what is going, I have tried to observe local trends here in the Detroit suburbs. There are some very strange things going on with this election. For example, in past elections I have seen a fair number of bumper stickers and yard signs. I have seen almost nothing so far for either side.
My friends have said that when confronted with polling that they either do not provide input or they provide false input. The polls are considered tools of the leftist MSM and they want to destroy their usefulness.
The MSM seems almost rabid – my friends have stopped watching/reading.
In my local Barnes & Noble, “Atlas Shrugged” is a best selling paperback.
At a recent party, I wound up talking to a couple a bit older than me that I had not met before. It was going pleasantly but then the wife mentioned that I sound displeased with current politics. This was the point at which I assumed things were going to down hill. I then admitted I was absolutely voting against Obama. Then I found out they were big tea party supporters!
So, to reiterate, I think the polls are bunk. I’m definite that Obama’s support will drop from 2008. I think with less conviction that many people will see that Obama’s actions have harmed the country and that Romney will win easily.
If I am wrong and Obama wins, I will proceed to my local Costco that is now selling buckets of sealed survival rations and start my preparations. Watching the slow motion collapse of the socialist Euro zone has been both enlightening and frightening.
Very interesting post, Zombie. It & the comments have made me think about this and while I think you are right that these polls don’t have a *direct* casual relationship to how people will actually vote on 11/6, I think they could have an indirect, ripple effect.
As others posters have pointed out — these polls can impact money — people may say to themselves “Well, I’ll still show up & vote for Romney, but I’m not throwing good money after bad.” This could directly impact GOTV efforts on 11/6. Also, as others have pointed out, the polls are causing people (not just pundits, but posters as well) on the right to start complaining about everything Romney is doing “wrong” (I’ve seen more than once around the blogosphere, for example, how “Newt would be doing X, Y, Z right now’). This could all feed into the narrative the MSM is trying to build that Romney is an inept, gaffe machine running a “horrible” campaign (i.e., “Look! Other conservatives agree! Romney’s campaign is a mess!”) — and *that* narrative could definitely snowball enough to seep into the disengaged/uninformed voters’ fog by 11/6.
Also, I think it causes our side to start focusing a little too much on the polls as we attempt psychoanalysis of ever minute aspect of Romney’s every move — Laura Ingrahm basically argued tonight on O’Reilly that “The polls can’t be too wrong, because Romney isn’t really pushing back on them” as if it is of the utmost importance for Romney & Ryan to drop everything else they are doing & address the polls (this comment isn’t meant as a slight against Ingrahm, per se. I’m just pointing out that she may be giving way more much importance/focus to these polls than the Romney camp does & is drawing conclusions based on their actions/inactions for which she has no other basis than these polls) . Shouldn’t we be more focused on hitting Obama — on the economy (GDP is down to 1.3 today) or on the Libya cover up, just to name 2 examples, than these polls? We’re kind of allowing the polls to become a distraction from OBAMA — his record, his job performance & his outright lies should be our main focus right now, IMO, not the polls. If we don’t hold Obama accountable for his job performance, the MSM certainly will not, and that could effect how the independents vote on election day.
Additionally, these polls are already being used by the MSM to declare that the first debate is “do or die” for Romney — I’ve seen people actually referring to the very FIRST debate in terms of Romney needing a “Hail Mary.” Thus, unless Romney delivers a performance like Clarence Darrow at the Scopes Monkey Trial, the debate will be declared (at worst) a “disaster” for him or (at best) “not enough” to change the direction of his “already fumbling campaign,” and *that* could effect how people vote on 11/6.
Finally, and purely based on anecdotal evidence, these polls may have the greatest impact on Obama supporters — as you point out, the usual reaction when your side is “down” is for you to redouble your efforts. Same applies to me – but Obama supporters, not so much. They are like adolescents — if they don’t think something is a slam dunk, they don’t really like to put in the effort. These polls have given them that boost — more of my FB Obot friends have been posting pro-Obama posts in the last two days (previously, they had been surprisingly — and refreshingly — quiet this election season except for a few “Romney bashing” posts here & there). The “bandwagon” may be aimed at Obama’s base more than anything else, getting them to volunteer & out to the polls on 11/6.
‘All or most of them need to be true for poll-skewing to be effective.’
Well, actually only one of them really needs to be true for poll-skewing to be effective.
Bamboozled!
Combine 3 & 4
Low info voters, when in doubt, imitate the majority. Their model of what the majority believes come via osmosis, a 10 second news headline before changing the channel, 30 seconds of local news teasers, somebody at work, from the union, or a case worker, casually mentioning that Obama is winning.
Well, these polls from known media partisans showing Obama with double-digit leads in Ohio, VA, & Florida based on wildly skewed samples almost have to be intentional, but the recurring large Democratic sample advantages in most polls can be explained.
Pew Research recently moaned about the response rates of today’s polls. Back in the ’80s with only a handful of pollsters, response rates (the % of people reached who agree to answer the questions) was 75% and more. By 1997, it was down to 39%, and today Pew suggests it has fallen to 9%.
Now, it is still theoretically possible to obtain a good random sample with such a low rate, even though it requires many more calls (running up costs) BUT only if the refusal rate is more or less evenly spread across the population being surveyed.
I suspect that is not the case, and conservatives and Tea Party types are far more likely to refuse to participate these days. I have nothing but anecdotal evidence this is the case, but it fits our profile, and would account for Democratic skewed samples for nearly all polls.
Also, the “bandwagon” swing voters are a relatively small group, but in a close election they could sway the outcome.
Remember in 2000, two things happened that depressed GOP turnout and made it close. Bush’s decades-old DUI arrest broke the final weekend, which resulted in many (up to 4 million according to Rove) evangelical voters staying home. Then, Gore reps lobbied the networks to make the early call on Florida for Gore before polls had closed in the Panhandle (which is on Central time). We know this made some late voters say the heck with it, why go out and stand in line if it’s lost?
There may also have been a ripple effect nationwide by that Florida false call for Gore.
I think you miss an important reason to skew the polls, namely that they “prove” that Obama is a competent leader/executive. This was especially important in 2008, since his only real executive experience was being in charge of his election campaign. Thus, we were told that we should vote for Obama because he proved that he had leadership. How? He ran his campaign well. How do we know? He is ahead in the polls, of course. Skewing the polls buttresses the media narrative that Obama is running a good campaign and that Romney is running a poor one.
Now, this alone is not enough. But, couple a true misstep that feeds into the idea that a campaign is poorly-run, such as suspending it in order to deal with a financial crisis a scant week before the election, and the narrative is reinforced. Thus, the skew is a bank shot. It is not “Vote for Obama because he is ahead in the polls.” but rather “Vote for Obama because he is a skilled and wise leader as proven by his skillful and wise running of his campaign as proven by the fact that he is ahead in the polls. What a strategist! What an orator!”
I understand that there are many reasons — including the one you outline — to skew the polls. What this essay is about is the assumptions behind that reasoning.
You’re given left too much credit. Media doesn’t really make any of these assumtions, because concept of assumption doesn’t exist in their universe. To make an assumption a person must have at least basic understanding of logic and causative-consecutive relationships – and if they do, they don’t become left.
It’s much simpler – media are skewing the polls, because in their world if they’ll pretend something to be true, it will become true. Just like children yell “I’m Batman” in hope this will really turn them into Batman.
Sadly, I think you just hit the nail on the head.
Obama’s Politburo of Propaganda hasn’t been able to make Romney look as bad as Palin. But, it’s not for lack of effort.
After the debates, you can count on more intense efforts to do the same.
Maybe ACORN and SEIU will be giving out free Obama-phones to the attendees of the debates.
If Obama gets re-elected, the Iranians will be able to conquer the U.S. with a sling shot and a few pebbles.
If Obama loses; There will be riots, looting, and law suits.
I just skimmed the piece, Zombie. I am an ex-pollster of sorts, at the grunt level. A whole lot of shenanigans go on.
My take – a certain amount of pro-Obama skewing, and probably more biased articles in the mainstream skewing the skewing.
The political/voting reality – I believe Romney is ahead. I think Libya is hitting Obama in the face about now. I hope the pro-Israel elements in the American public will mesh with the ‘let’s survive these socialist/czarist tyrants’ elements combined with ‘let’s find someone to save the economy.’
From over here, the US is looking pretty bleak these days..
I find it amazing that some of the intelligent commentators or pundits on the Republican side still believe that polls are not an influence on a large segment of the voters in this country. Apparently they do not live or work among them and spend time with the average, uninformed, and fact ignorant voters who actually vote based on what they “think” and “believe” what is printed or reported by the MSM.
They remind me of the commercial where the young lady tells her friend that if it isn’t true, they can’t put it on the internet and her date, an ugly guy shows up, she introduces him as a French model and he replies, “Bon Jour” without even trying a French accent. The sensible people who actually think about the issues, consider the consequences of the actions of the party in power, and make an attempt to understand what their vote for a particular candidate will actually mean see through the charade but there are too many out there who would believe the guy is actually a “French model”.
I work and walk among these people, but writers of political opinion pieces as a general rule do not. I am tired of Republican intelligensia actually believing that people are not swayed by such drivel as biased opinion polls. The sad fact is that a population who makes entertainment programs like American Idol, The Voice, celebrity shows and so-called reality shows like “Lizard Lick Towing” the mainstay of their existence are easily swayed by a poll that oversamples in favor of one party or the other, in this instance, Democrats and Obama in particular does exist and does so in abundance, enough to make a huge difference in an election as important as the one in November.
Obama goes on “The View” and does not take time to meet with world leaders, especially Netanyahu(sp?). Why you ask? Answer – because his base is tuned in to the show and he knows it. It gets a lot of publicity and exposure by his appearance and it gets his message across and when the viewers see the polls, they believe them because they reflect what they have come to believe.
And, do the polls discourage voters? Absolutely. Once again, Republicans don’t get it when it comes to playing mind games with the voters. This has been proven. If you have 10 people during the day tell one person he or she doesn’t look well or asks if they are not feeling well, by the end of the day, the person will complain about not feeling well, have a headache, or some other ailment, especially if they are subject to manipulation at any level. This is the accumulative effect of negatives on a normally positive person and the impact is real to the person. The polling numbers showing Obama up by double digits or a large margin DOES have an impact.
When SEIU pays people to demonstrate at a Romney rally and it makes the news, it does send a message that subtly reinforces the polling numbers.
Damn, when will Republicans wake up and understand just how uninformed, ignorant, and pliable the masses really are? When will Republicans understand that at some point, you have to take a chance, take the damn gloves off and hit back with full intent of putting your opponent down for the count?
McCain tried to be a “gentleman” and he got his butt kicked from one end of the country to the other by a lightweight non-contender with no record because of the collective ignorance of the electorate.
Romney, wake up and if you have to, go bare knuckle. That is what the 6% you are looking to influence understand, not the ivory tower thinking of the old Republican establishment.
Damn, when will Republicans wake up and understand just how uninformed, ignorant, and pliable the masses really are? When will Republicans understand that at some point, you have to take a chance, take the damn gloves off and hit back with full intent of putting your opponent down for the count?
I’m with you on this, but not particularly with the preceeding. In a normal year Republicans, being just plain folk like anyone else, might look at the polls and be swayed. This time around, I don’t think so.
How about the Great Undecided, are they listening, as in most times past?
I dunno. If they were listening, they would hardly be undecided.
So, the faux bandwagon is deployed to try to sway a sliver of these undecided, basically, where in most years it might affect a much broader audience. I think that’s what strikes us all about all the effort to propagate these absurd polls, even while admitting their bias. Seems a lot of work for very little return. Still, it might be crucial, and frankly it’s not very expensive as these things go, so why not.
But what goes with your point about gloves off is also that a good politician goes after EVERYONE. It sure *sounded* the other day like Romney was ceding 47% of the POTENTIAL voters. Pragmatically yeah, that’s the case, but don’t try to be too smart for your own good, it’s your DUTY to TRY for every single registered voter in the country … and as many of the illegal voters as you can scoop up as well. Even Obambus does this, from time to time. And Romney’s only a RINO on even his best days. EVERY voter, Mitt, and don’t forget it. Of course focus 98% of your money on critical segments, but one more time: EVERY voter. And their kids, and their pets.
Whatever the assumptions are, whichever ones are true, or false, I can state the following in no uncertain terms.
1. I’ve received more calls from pollsters this year than ever before.
2. In the past I’ve always hung up on any pollster that has interrupted my peaceful existence.
3. This year, I participate in all automated polls and speak pleasantly to any human caller who wants to poll me.
4. This year, I unabashedly LIE to any and all pollsters, human or automated, who interrupt my peaceful existance.
5. This last point, point #5, is totally unprovable and only my opinion, but I believe that there are MANY people who follow the procedure outlined in point #4.
As a result of my belief in point #5, I totally discount any and all polls reported by the media, since I am certain that they are inaccurate to some ( a very large??) degree.
I’m working my butt off to help defeat Obama and skew the Congress into a more Conservative posture, and WHATEVER the media reports will not change that. The actual vote will be what it will be, ALL the politicians and/or their people will cheat to whatever degree they think they can get away with, and the Republic (that I thought we had) will survive or not. My opinion that we are beyond the point of no return is only that, my opinion.
What’s the point?
Is Zombie arguing that the polls aren’t skewed because skewing them doesn’t influence people, or is he arguing that the polls are skewed but it doesn’t do any good? Or something else. The whole thing is a mishmash.
And his assumptions about the assumptions are clearly wrong anyway. It’s completely obvious that creating a false narrative based on false polls influences voters, for the simple reason that the media spends something like 30% of its time shoving the false narratives down everyone’s thoats. Would he argue that the media has no influence on people’s behavior at all? He wouldn’t, so why pick narratives based on polls out of a hat and claim that they don’t work. Of course they work.
His aricles are often brilliant. This one doesn’t make much sense.
And your evidence for this (other than a gut feeling) is……..?
Oh, you require controlled test cases. The old if you don’t choose to spend months proving your case than I win game.
And here I was thinking that the fact that a substantial majority of the population has claimed for years that they are conservative, yet consistently votes about 50% for the media’s favored liberal politicians might be some evidence of the influence of the media. How naive of me in the face of YOUR more elegantly stated unprovable assertions.
I’ll slink off now and join the one or two other observors (all without labatory test cases) who mistakenly think that the left dedicates substantial time and resources to manipulating public opinion.
And darn it, this also shoots down the whole idea that obama seems to have some rather un-American activities in his backgroud. No proof there either. No fire, no match.
Very persuasive.
Zombie, you have wonderfully articulated what I have been thinking for YEARS! Like you, I have seen no research on the actual effectiveness of these propagandized skewed polls and since the left continues to use the tool of skewed polls – I thought on some level they must work. But based on previous elections (they did not help Carter, Kerry, or Scott Walker) – - I have begun to suspect that they may actually backfire. And despite what WEO states in previous post – that fact that the MSM spends so much time peddling these polls is in no way proof that they actually work. It is not like big city dailies, CNN, & 6 O’clock news shows are so clever that they are gaining viewers/readers. I would argue that the people running the MSM are isolated committed leftist lemmings who would commit hari kari to save their dear leader. These are the folks that lift stories directly from Media Matters after all.
Part of the reason this piece resonated so much with me is that I have spoken to hundreds of registered voters (Republican, Dem, & “unenrolled”/Independent) while phone banking for Republican candidates in MA. In my experience “bad polls” seem to motivate & energize the registered Republicans, whereas the Dems seem to get more complacent when their guy/gal is in the lead. Before the Brown/Coakely special election for the Senate in Jan. 2010 – the Boston Globe [Democrat] put out a poll [they conducted and the sample was one of the most ridiculous I have ever seen] less than two weeks prior that had her up by 6 or 7. [A little earlier Rasmussen did a poll for the election that had her up by I think 4 or 5 but unless you read the Boston Herald you did not know about that one.] I spoke to many registered Republicans and middle of the road or right leaning Independents [who supported Brown] who basically said they would crawl over broken glass to get to the polls and chose to disregard the “bad for Brown” polls. [At the time Brown being the 51st vote against Obamacare was big deal.] Many Dems (I knew personally and spoke to phone banking) indicated that they were confident in the polls [meaning Globe one] and seemed assured a victory – I am sure some of them did not bother to vote. [Brown ended up winning BY 5 POINTS.] Which brings up another point that Zombie did not touch on – Dems are inherently lazier. [I can speak to this as a recovering Dem who has grown up with and lived and worked amongst them in two different states for my entire life.] I remember a gubernatorial election in MA – I worked with all Dem women – and it was not out of reach for the Republican even by the skewed polls presented. They questioned whether they would bother to vote b/c it was raining and said the Dem [who did end up winning] would win no matter what. I never forgot that.
The skewed polls are deliberate and allow the democrats to legitimize and minimize the cheating when it is discovered/caught. they will say it’s ONLY a microscopic amount, LOOK HOW CLOSE THE VOTING RESULTS ARE TO THE POLLS, when they’ve just implemented a 5% voter fraud. Personally, I feel anything that smells fishy should be confronted.
I don’t really care what intrade is showing, I’m a retired electrical worker, and my former co-workers aren’t voting democrat this year like the union leadership demands. Just because you support collective bargaining doesn’t mean you are willing to become a communist and trash the constitution and bill of rights, and many union members know the economy is always better with a republican president.
#42 Karl, your mention of the Florida effect was exactly what I was thinking but for me it was the people on the West Coast hearing the exit polls from the East and deciding their guy won or lost so don’t bother to go to vote. Though it is interesting to see how my guy is doing, I think it might be better to not announce anything until the next morning.
I don’t know or care how typical I am but I don’t pay any attention to polls. I like to hear the candidates and what they say they are planning to do if they get elected. I also watch what the incumbent has done while he has been in office as well as a bit of the history of the other guy and what he has done before. In Obama’s case I sometimes wonder who he is talking about! After seeing what he has done to this country there is no way I would vote for him. He seems to think being the man of mystery is a good thing but not being able to find anything but his voting “present” record turned me off four years ago and now I’m convinced he is not what this country needs. I hope there are many more like me out there and we won’t have to find out what will happen in another four years.
I would describe the conclusion of this article as the Taranto Principle, pollster edition.
Questioned Assumption #5 is best illustrated by the infamous Markos vs Nate Silver fiasco.
When you word it as: “When a person sees that his team is in second place, he gives up and stops fighting” then it seems that, of course, that isn’t true of many (most?) people. But what if the thought/wording is: “When a person sees that his cause is hopeless, he gives up and stops fighting”? Now this is certainly true for many (most?) people. Reportedly, for example, when the 2000 election night newscasts said Gore won Florida, a lot of people in the Panhandle (in the Central Time Zone, where they still had another hour to vote) walked away from the longish voter lines. They gave up. (To be sure, the Panhandle is Republican-leaning; perhaps a similar proportion of the minority of Democrats also gave up.)
I think if the polls can turn a neck-and-neck fight to one where Obama is perceived up by, say, 8% or more, then some people won’t bother to vote. Now it’s not 2008, when many people were really excited to vote in the new, but I have to think demoralization is still more, well, demoralizing than is premature triumphalism.
The truth is worse than you imagine. Of course the polls are biased. But the Democrats figure they can cheat by 3 or more points, and after the election, when questions are raised, they will say “but the results were in line with the polls, so any actual concrete examples you cite, no matter how many, are obviously so rare as to have had no effect on the outcome”.
Wait and see.
This whole poll issue reminds me of what Sarah Palin said earlier in the year: Polls are for strippers and cross country skiers.
“The end result is that for every Romney voter who stays home because he was tricked into thinking his vote will be futile in a sea of Obama votes, there may very well be an equal number of Obama voters who stay home because they were incidentally tricked into thinking their votes are unnecessary since Obama will win in a landslide.”
That could be distilled into Fallacious Assumption #1B:
When a person sees that his/her team is in FIRST place, (s)he figures voting is still worth the trouble.
AZ had it right in #1. Put another way, the polls are building the narrative for a post-election court challenge of the results should Obama lose.
Or, as Baron Stamp put it, “The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the chowky dar (village watchman in India), who just puts down what he damn pleases.” judge).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Stamp,_1st_Baron_Stamp#Quotes
The story appears also in “Churchill’s secret war : the British empire and the ravaging of India during World War II”by Mukerjee,
http://catalog.tscpl.org/polaris/search/browse.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.6&type=Browse&by=TI&term=Churchill%27s+secret+war+%3a+the+British+empire+and+the+ravaging+of+India+during+World+War+II+%2f&page=0
There is a very good reason for skewing the polls at this point in the election. This is pre-debate setup. Obama without his teleprompter has demonstrated a proclivity make gaffs and errors. Romney while not a great debater has so far been fairly sound speaking off the cuff. So it is reasonable to expect that if both men have a fairly nominal performance, Romney will be perceived as a narrow winner. However, if Romney is BEHIND and FALLING going into the debate the media will present the case that he needs a big win. No matter how well Romney does nor how poorly Obama does, the spin following the debate will be that Romney’s performance was not “enough to turn things around”. The president may not have had a great night but he did more than well enough to keep his momentum.
No matter what Romney does, the spin will always be that he failed and everything is a disaster. Polls or no polls.
Zombie, you never even considered the “Observer Effect” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29) which I believe makes the whole Poll thing prone to “Truman Wins” headlines. However in a time when Truth has been replaced by a 5 to 4 decision of the Supreme Court, and Facts are replaced by Spin, there is probably no observation being done anyway. With the ballots being counted in Spain, by a Soros owned company, all that matters is “What Color is your parachute.”
A decent percentage of the “Honey Boo Boo” voters WILL vote for the candidate they think is winning. They don’t know anything, but they will bet on who they think is winning in order to seem like they are not the imbeciles that they really are. Poll skewing techniques DO actually affect many “Honey Boo Boo” voters, I say. That is why we have to convince the HoneyBs that our guy is winning. Zombie should focus on his “Honey Boo Boo” voters because he got that thesis absolutely, as opposed to mostly, right. ABO2012
At this point in the 1980 election, Gallup was giving Carter an 8-point lead, and the Lamestream was desperately trying to put lipstick on the Stagflation Misery Index Pig.
The 2nd Quarter numbers have been revised down, unemployment remains over 8%, and gasoline is a $4/gallon levels; the media trumpets that Obama can now show a net job gain of 350,000 jobs since 2009 at the paltry cost of $6 Trillion over tax revenues collected. Middle East policy is imploding, and the Apologizer-in-chief pleads with the thugs in the UN to live up to the non-existence “values of the United Nations.”
Beltway pollsters have become like mandarins of the late Ming Dynasty, who were too afraid of the fall-out of mentioning bad news to bring to the Divine Emperor’s attention the pesky fact that the Imperial forces had been annihilated, and the Manchu hordes were at the gates.
Hey Zombie,
I think that this comes back to the fundamental philosophical differences between the parties. If you look at the consequences of our conservative “Tragic View” of humanity (that our nature is, essentially, unchangeable and we are hopelessly self centered,greedy, etc, etc, etc) versus the “new man” of the Robespierre and the French Revolution (which, if you accept a lot of modern conservative thought, provided the philosophical roots of modern ‘what-we-call-liberalism-today’) then you see an acknowledgement of an objective reality (tragic) versus a warm/fuzzy hope in the transformative power of political thought (leftist). In other words: conservative thought tends to say: “here is reality. We must work around that” while leftism says “here is reality. We can change that!” (the Communists thought that they were making new people too!). Now- expand this philosophy outward from that kernel of belief and you can see where modern liberal pollsters might say “hey…we can mold reality through sheer force of will!” (just like their forefathers: Stalin, Mao, Robespierre). That “sheer force of will” is taking the form of poll skewing.
My point is that you aren’t asking the right question here, Zombie…it doesn’t matter whether or not it WORKS….it’s almost something that leftists HAVE to do because it is the seed of the root of the plant that makes up that particular political philosophy. There are examples of this EVERYWHERE in leftism: see the way they are constantly re-writing history to make Republicans look like the racists. They HAVE to alter reality when it becomes too inconvenient to face.
It’s not lost on me that they would argue the exact same thing in reverse (i.e: that we conservatives are attempting to change the “inevitable” loss of our candidate through sheer force of will)…and my comeback would be that for some this may be true- but at least for some conservatives this might be a psychological defense…but at least ‘reality shifting’ does not form the basis of our political philosophy.
Very good points — and hopefully you read my earlier essay specifically addressing the difference between the “innate human nature” conservatiive view versus the “constructed man” leftist view:
The Electric Tea Party Acid Test
Look at the chart VERY carefully and you’ll see that it explains visually everything you just said verbally.
I have now made the following update to the essay (see post above):
UPDATE:
Thanks to a tip from “Rob Crawford” in the comments section, I have finally tracked down what I was looking for: a study which does in fact attempt to test and document what it calls “the bandwagon effect.” You can download the pdf of the full study here:
Effects of Poll Reports on Voter Preferences
The authors claim to have demonstrated experimentally that false poll reports can sway the electorate as much as 6%. But a close examination of how the study was conducted reveals that its conclusions are only applicable to a highly specific situation, and are irrelevant to elections such as the contest between Obama and Romney.
In the study, which was conducted during the Republican presidential primaries in February 1996, self-identified Republicans were divided into two groups and each isolated group asked their preference between candidates Bob Dole and Steve Forbes. Then each group was subsequently informed of a different false poll: the first group was told that a recent poll put Dole far in the lead against Forbes; while the second group was told the opposite, that a poll placed Forbes way out in front. Then the groups were asked a second time their preferences, and (to gloss over the complicated statistics) the Dole-poll group swayed 6% to Dole, while the Forbes-poll group swayed 6% to Forbes.
While this might seem pretty convincing at first glance, there are several factors which render it meaningless vis-a-vis the current election:
• There really was very little ideological or political difference between Dole and Forbes. Both were moderate-conservative Republicans with similar positions on almost every issue. The only differentiating factor was that Forbes was pushing a flat-tax gimmick, the consequence of which wouldn’t have been much different from what Dole was proposing more boringly. As a result, it was quite easy and not a philosophical leap to switch from one to the other (as it would be to switch from Romney to Obama). One might as well have conducted a study proving that 6% of people would change their ice cream order from Mint Chocolate Chip to Mint Fudge Ripple once the waitress told them that Mint Fudge Ripple was more popular. But imagine if the choice was between Vanilla Pudding and Szechuan Gizzard Flambé; I doubt many people would change their orders no matter what the waitress said.
• Almost all voters rally around their party’s eventual nominee, no matter who he turns out to be. Thus, it’s hardly surprising that a room full of Republicans would embrace whichever Republican appeared to be winning the race. But the situation is completely different in a general election, which is not a friendly rivalry like a intra-party primary but rather is a knock-down-drag-out showdown between competing worldviews. So the 1996 study is not really applicable to 2012 realities.
• The experiment was a hermetically sealed environment in which the participants had only one source of information which they were told to trust implicitly. So it was effortless to mislead them. But a real-world campaign is far messier, and try as they might the Obama-friendly media does not have a monopoly over the narrative, and voters have to choose between competing claims — the polls are true, the polls are lies, Obama’s leading, the race is a tie, Romney’s ahead, and so forth. In our real-world election, the poll-debunkers have created such a fuss that even the Obama-loving media spends an inordinate amount of time discussing and trying to dismiss the doubters, which shatters their own narrative monopoly. And to top it off, record numbers of Americans distrust the media altogether.
• A secondary part of the 1996 study was to test whether strong convictions could be altered by false polls, and found that in fact they can’t be. The experimenters conducted follow-up tests that essentially proved that strong opinions can’t be changed by false poll results, whereas weak opinions can be. But that once again confirms that the study has no relevance to 2012, in which voters on both sides express strong support for each candidate in record numbers, as compared to earlier elections. It also proves that the original subjects probably didn’t really care about the difference between Dole and Forbes in the first place, since they were partly swayed by false polls.
All in all, the “Effects of Poll Reports on Voter Preferences” study made some interesting observations, but nothing in the study demonstrated that “the bandwagon effect” can induce people to change parties or fundamental ideologies — only that false polls can induce people to vacillate between two similar options.
One final note: “Effects of Poll Reports on Voter Preferences” makes oblique references to earlier studies of the bandwagon effect, though many of them were conducted many decades ago. It would be interesting to dig them out and see if any of them have any relevance to our current election.
If poll-skewers are relying on evidence like this study to justify their deceptions, they may be in for a shock when election day rolls around.
All that is probably true, but it doesn’t account for the Honey Boo Boos, who don’t pay enough attention to even have a party allegiance to sway them. They don’t care about anything any political poll says, but they do think they are supposed to vote in the Presidential elections. These voters can only be identified by their voting habit, which is to vote only in Presidential years and only as unaffiliated voters. This turns out to be a significant number of so called independent voters and these idiots will skew any Presidential election towards whomever they imagine is winning (See posting #76 for why I think a large percentage of this group will vote this way.) So, contrary to the latest view of Zombie and others, I continue to believe poll skewing affects Presidential election outcomes more so than all other elections. Romney and Obama both know this. The Obama campaign will use poll skewing to reach Mr and Mrs pathetic Honey Boo Boo, and Romney will be forced to claim everywhere he can that HE is winning in Honey Boo Boo’s neighborhood in order to reduce Obama’s advantage with these imbeciles. All said, if Romney can create a bandwagon for these bozos during one of the debates, he will completely negate Obama’s advantage and the real electorate will then provide him with a clear victory. Romney knows this and he will try out some glib slogan which his focus groups will tell him Honey Boo Boo will like. It has been one of several sad facts of American political life that our ridiculously lazy news media are creating because they waste so much noise on polling data in the first place. I think real campaign reform would include not allowing the media to publish polling results at all during the last 60 days before a general election. Short of that happening, lets get on with trying ways to reach Honey Boo Boo and make him/her think our guy is winning. I have yard signs, bumper stickers, a ball cap, and I put out an empty chair every Monday morning with a short anti Obama phrase on it. I don’t care if some moron decides to deface my expensive truck because I have insurance and I like owning my expensive truck. An Obama win will even destroy that privilege, I think. It is time to really make silly fools of ourselves if that is what it takes to defeat these Communists(or whatever it is you like to call them). ABO2012.
I think people here simply don’t understand sampling theory.
The naive idea of “just ask people randomly” does NOT work (in this or in any other poll) because there is always a difference between the people you WANT to sample — those who will vote, or might be interested in your new product, or are women — and the population at large. If men all love your new fragrance for women and women all hate it, your product is loved by a whopping 50% of the population, but might not sell a single bottle, since the target audience dislikes it.
Same with elections. If one sampled people randomly in the USA, for instance, you’ll sample those under 18, non-citizens, people with Alzheimer’s, and other groups whose opinion — for the purpose of predicting the election result — do not matter since they do not vote. Sampling only those who have voting rights doesn’t work either, since many of those (in fact nearly half) choose not to vote.
The point of sampling theory is to get a sample that represents that group you want to sample — in this case, those who will actually go to vote on election day. The best sample for that is those who voted in the last election, unless there is some very good reason to choose another sample. And this groups has more democrats than republicans. This, and not any democatic / media conspiracy, is the reason for the “skeweing”.
OF COURSE it is possible that the polls will miss — if a different composition of people goes to the polls, for example, than those who went last election. Or if people lie to pollsters. Or if those who AGREE TO TALK TO POLLSTERS in the chosen group are not representative of those who will actually vote after all. Who says they can’t be wrong? Nobody, including the pollsters themselves.
So I fail to see what the bruhaha is about. It’s not a conspiracy, and it’s not proof Obama will win (or lose, for that matter) either.
Oh, people here understand sampling theory, all right — and that’s precisely why they scoff at the polls. The key problem is in your sentence
Actually, there are very good reasons to choose other sample bases. The pollsters are using the sample of those who voted in 2008, which of course was a Democrat high-water mark. But they’e not using a sample from the most recent election, 2010, which was a disaster for Dem participation.
Furthermore, even if that wasn’t true, the polls reveal a much higher rate of registration, enthusiasm, and intention to vote among Republicans in 2012, as compared to 2008. The pollsters have more recent stats to base their samples on — why not rely on their own stats about Republican/Democrat likely voters in 2012 rather than an out-of-date sample ratio from 2008?
We all know why — because with a 2008-adjusted sample, you can produce a strong pro-Obama result, even though it likely is not accurate.
We already all know this — this issue was the starting point of the discussion in my essay, which examines the mistaken assumptions of why skewing like this is even a good idea.
>>>>>> Actually, there are very good reasons to choose other sample bases. The pollsters are using the sample of those who voted in 2008, which of course was a Democrat high-water mark. But they’e not using a sample from the most recent election, 2010, which was a disaster for Dem participation.
No doubt. But I can surely see reasons for using the 2008 data: i.e., the fact that the demographic voting patterns in local or state elections are different than those in a presidential election.
As for your other suggestions, registration isn’t that closely related to actual voting (so far as I know) and how do you measure “enthusiasm”? One can equally add, if one thinks “enthusiasm” means more republicans should be polled, that Obama being more “likeable” means more democrats should.
Let me put it this way. Suppose that McCain had been elected in a landslide in 2008, but now people seem to be disappointed with him, and Obama is being really good in campaigning. Would you then think that pollsters saying, “well, we usually poll based on the last elections, but this Obama guy is generating a lot of enthusiasm now, so we’ll over-sample democrats to compensate”? I think you’d be angry, quite righly, at them trying to skew the polls with such subjective measures like “enthusiasm”.
Can the polls still be wrong? OF COURSE — for the reasons I noted, as well as many others. But that seems to be the best we can do.
There are objective ways to measure the two parties’ enthusiasm and head-counts. Registration and early-voting applications include party registration, for example. It is my understanding that both are favoring Republicans this year. Registration is a prerequisite to voting, and at any rate, if one party’s registration numbers have increased relative to the other party’s, then the first party will have more voters even if the two parties’ “enthusiasm” or turnout is identical.
Enthusiasm can also be polled. See http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2012/09/26/cbs-trumpets-obamas-growing-lead-own-poll-barely-mentions-republicans
Also, with telephone poll response rates down to 9% this year, and with Republicans half as likely as Democrats to say they trust the press, there is considerable reason to be skeptical of all polls. At any rate, one should not let a poll convince you not to vote.
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.
Ha ha! Won’t you feel confused on November 7.
You mean like the fine response to the terrorist attack committed by Al Qaeda in Libya three weeks ago? You need to wake yourself up and decide to vote like an American this year. It just might be your last chance. Please respond to this and make my day, hot shot. ABO2012
The study of voter preferences actually does predict the preference change in low information voters… and some people who are stuck on cliches: There is no difference between the parties.
This cliche has no validity this year, but I see it on nearly every blog.
For them it is a choice between French Vanilla and Vanilla Bean ice cream. And those kind of people are the exact type the poll skewing is going for.
I see it like this.
Obama won big in 08 but the Democrats/Obama lost big at the next midterms. With the very lopsided outcome in the races/issues at all levels – Fed, State and Local it looked like a visceral rejection of the Left on the part of the public. Since then the actions/attitudes on the part of the admin and the Dems have been to further alienate the same people and add to their numbers by doubling down on the ideas that wiped them out at the mid-terms AND with new and even more arrogant, destructive and – to most Americans – repugnant actions – including really putting an economic hurt on the WHOLE middle class. I just do not see how the polls can be right in light of what happened at the ’10 mid terms and what has happened since. It would have to be true that some of the people that defected then have returned to Obama. Do not believe it.
Hmm. Thinking back I honestly can’t remember the last time I was really truthful with any pollster or, well, any type of questionnaire not directly tied to a government agency… Well, ok there was one radio listener questionnaire I answered truthfully because I’m sick of shows I like getting the axe.
Information by its self can change elections. During 2000 elections, Florida with 2 time zones, had not finished voting when news agencies called the race for Gore. Many people in the panhandle didn’t vote because they thought the state was lost to Gore.
Polls can & do have the same effect on voters. Your article assumes a single poll in most cases but there are now daily polls. The adage of “tell a lie often enough and people will believe it” applies here. A candidate who consistently, albeit falsely, is always ahead in a poll can and do sway voters to simply stay home. Keeping likely voters home with mis-information is much easier than voter fraud and legal.
We have already seen heavily weighted polls using the 2008 election data as a baseline. 2008 was a unique year in Presidential elections. Many groups and sub groups voted during that election that otherwise stay home and don’t get involved in politics. These “false” assumptions are skewing polls and confusing and discouraging voters. Some think at this early stage all is lost and there is no need to go vote or even follow the election. This is the result that “cheating” pollsters are hoping for.
My advice to anyone who wants their candidate to win is to GO VOTE! Screw the polling data and vote for the people and/or party you want to win. Doing your part may tip the scales in your candidates favor. Get your friends, kids, grandparents, neighbors or club members to just go vote.
Some countries don’t allow public polling information to be released before an election for all the reasons I stated above. The US would do its electorate a favor to legislate the same rules here.
Zombie: Excellent essay. A point that may or may not have been brought up yet (I haven’t read all the comments). A strong possibility for skewing the polls regarding the Presidential race is that it has little to do with the actual vote but more to do with keeping a given candidate viable in terms of fundraising. If candidate A is ahead in the polls, many monied interests (special, labor, corporate, etc) are more liable to donate/fund the campaign. Many “hedge” their bets on who will win to insure access. If Candidate A falls behind Candidate B some of the hedge money A has received may dry up, if A falls too far behind B donors may see donating to A late in the race as “throwing good money after bad” and cut their donations. It is much more likely that the skewing of polls is not being done to influence the actual vote on election day but a skewing of data to make Candidate A to look more like a “good investment” for the monied interests that fund campaigns. This is akin to a company trying to puff up their balance sheets prior to a stock offering in order to get the highest initial price possible.
Well, so much for polls skewing, in the end we saw who had the most “investment”, though to be honest I was surprised as the race was closer than I thought would be.