Posted on 10/18/2016 8:27:31 PM PDT by 1-Eagle
In 1996, The Clintons used Polls as Propaganda to suppress the Dole/Kemp Campaign. Imagine trying to get donations, recruit volunteers, or attract people to your rallies if your team has been behind in the polls by as much as 27% all summer, and those polls have been pounded into your brain 24/7. Thats what happened to Dole/Kemp.
Take a look at the poll averages for 1996 here:
1996 Polling on wikipedia
This example of polls being used as propaganda is instructive. Notice how Clinton is said to be leading by as much as 27% during one week! Yet on election day he won by 8%. This would seem to be a very radical swing of opinion, except that it is all fabricated. Only 2 of approximately 15 pollsters even finished within the fictional accuracy statistic called the "margin of error". This, alone, should show everyone that the "margin of error" is a fiction of the pollsters imagination. A propaganda tool to say "this poll is accurate within 4%" when no such thing is true, and certain was NOT true for 99% of polls leading up to election day.
How did we get into this discussion?
A Freeper did some impressive extrapolation of an LA Times Poll and discovered that approximately 57% of respondents were women, which is about 5% over the national census for 1996. Don't quote me on that, theres been a lot of water under the bridge. But that is close. Can't remember the handle of the Freeper that discovered this interesting demographics problem which slanted the poll toward Clinton because many women have been known to vote democrat for a reason that remains unknown. So this launched a lot of interest into the techniques used by pollsters especially when you consider the high water mark set by the polls with a lead of 27% for Clinton in mid-summer. Clearly polls could be and were being used as Campaign Suppression tools.
Any college student who has taken Statistics can vouch that the accuracy of a poll is determined by various factors with one of the most important being the size of the sample. In todays America of over 300 million people, you simply cannot call 500, 900, or even 10,000 people and get any accurate idea of what is going to happen if the election were held even today. There are too many factors including the time of day most calls were made, and so on and so forth.
Notice in this 1996 polling example how the pollsters covered themselves by finally making the polls show a tight race right at the end. By this time, the damage was done, the time for raising funds, recruiting volunteers, holding large rallies was over. It was now safe for the slanted polls to adjust and show a tight race. Having watched this carefully there was no doubt in my mind this was a carefully orchestrated propaganda scheme that worked perfectly for Clinton/Gore. Dole/Kemp struggled all summer to raise cash. A British journalist surmised after the election that in view of the finally tally of 8% if the media had not been so biased against Dole/Kemp they might have had a fighting chance.
Please tell your family, your friends, your co-workers, everyone: Polls are useless, just vote, because the polling booth is the only poll that counts!
Most of the polls are nothing more than psychological operations. They are put out to play with your mind.
But, but, but Romney lost in 2012!
The nationwide polls take polling data from individual counties in swing states and probable red/blue states and extrapolate those results to give an accurate forecast of who will win what electoral votes.
They don’t just call 10k people randomly around the country and ask “Who are you voting for?” Then say the country is voting this way or that way. That’s not how polling works.
I’m of the opinion that the fog of war will settle over the national scene as we approach election day, with such a withering barrage of BS flying from every direction that no one will know for sure what’s going on.
There will be countless polls, most bogus, a few real. There will be countless wild accusations, a new one ever hour or even every few minutes.
There will be all kinds of rumors too, about wars, and internet outages, and campaign dirty tricks, violence and planned violence, murders, you name it.
The thing to do is vote. Turn off the M$M and just vote.
Look, you can call x number of people in a county and so on and so forth. It means nothing, except that the results can be used as voter suppression and that is damaging to our Republic. We have to go vote no matter what on election day, do not allow ANYTHING to suppress your enthusiasm your donations your volunteerism because quitters never win and these polls are nothing but get rich quick schemes for the pollsters.
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Agree 100%. Just Vote. Please spread the word about how polls are just suppression tools and are not to be trusted. (Insert picture of Dewey Wins Headline here.)
If done correctly, with no handicapping for dems, results of polls CAN be accurate. Problem is everyone these days has an agenda, everyone is so opinionated that they can’t see past their bias.
All this chaos for the sake of one wretched, horrible bitch named Hillary and her communist govt.
You can’t get accuracy with a country of 300 million people by calling 900 or even 10,000. The sample is far too small. Its a fact that anything including weather can affect turnout and nobody knows who will win. Its also a fact that Trump still has far more enthusiasm than Hillary, and Hillary will have abysmal turnout except in precincts with ballot box stuffing.
Bob Doles Peanut Butter.
Theres a good chance it won’t work. Wikileaks is killing Hillary and emails + Benghazi not going away. If fraud is stopped, I think Trump wins. Lets pass the word that “polls” mean nothing... the only poll that counts is the voting booth.
If you dial up 10k registered voters in a single influential county in every county in a swing state you have a pretty accurate view of which way the state will go.
Accurate polling is important. Because accurate polling is good insurance against voter fraud.
For the jackasses in the media that are all saying that it is over, is both stupid and ridiculous.
There's nothing fictional about "margin of error". It's a real metric, based on the sample size and the total population.
But, in order for it to be correct, the sample has to be representative of the total population, and drawn randomly from the population. This is where polls fall short.
First, you don't even know what comprises the total population. Only about 6 out of 10 eligible voters actually vote, and you have to choose your sample from the voting population, excluding the non-voters.
Second: even if you could identify the voting population, it's difficult to sample them. Most refuse to participate. And, you have no way to determine if a participant is telling you the truth.
Third: our elections are easily manipulated. There is some dispute about how bad the problem is, but it's definitely more than zero. Over the years, there have been elections that were definitely stolen, but no one wants to admit that we missed some that couldn't be conclusively proven.
Your conclusion is basically correct: the polls shouldn't be believed. The pollsters pretend they are applying some kind of statistical methodology, but it's all snake oil.
If they get it right, it's a lucky accident.
They make up numbers and sometimes don’t call anyone. That’s how crooked polling works.
It was on Lou Dobbs tonight that there are a total of 18 million illegal and dead people registered to vote, some have already voted on absentee ballots. Four of the million are dead people. You know how the illegals will vote, and it seems likely the dead will also vote Dem. That is a huge voting bloc. If the election committees know these 18 million voters are illegal, why can’t they be removed from the voting registers? Disgusted with the corruption, the Dems, Obummer, and with the Clintons.
The most trustable polls are the internal polls. However I do not think Trump is conducting internal polls is he?
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