Posted on 09/11/2012 4:32:00 AM PDT by radioone
Pointing out the flaws in worthless polls would be a full-time job, if anyone were willing to undertake it. Today’s example comes from CNN and ORC. News organizations report on polls like this one as though they meant something; this one will be popular with media organizations because it shows President Obama with a six-point lead over Mitt Romney among likely voters. But a cursory review of the poll data shows that if it means anything at all, it is good news for Romney.
To begin with, the CNN/ORC poll follows on the heels of another survey by the same organizations two weeks earlier. The findings–based, obviously, on a small sample–suggest that four percent of voters changed their minds about the Democratic Party over the space of two weeks:
If the CNN/ORC poll contains any significant finding, it is this: independents favored Romney over Obama by 14%. That’s right, 14%:
Really, this whole exercise is getting tiresome. Yet one question remains: where is the poll that over-samples Republicans?
UPDATE: A commenter calculates:
to get to those totals the following breakdown works…
D – 38. I – 36. R – 26.
that’s D+12, right…
why they bother including ANY Republicans in the sample?
Window dressing.
The WashPost+ABC Poll must have been shamed into making some changes to move by 6 points in a day
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2929345/posts?page=1
If Obama and Holder can sue Gallup, maybe Mitt should follow suit. Seriously, this is fraud.
10 point oversample.... even though GOP reportedly has more registered voters this year.
That is a good question.
The way it is SUPPOSED to work is that you poll X number of people, determine how many are R, D, I, Black, Brown, White, Young, Old, ... and then take this data and, with your own special sauce to get the right demographic mix you adjust the results based on your TURNOUT MODEL. In a nutshell the R/D/I split is the turnout model. This R/D/I split should be independent of the actual distribution of Republicans, Democrats and Independents who actually answer the phone for the poll in question. If it is done this way then there is no WEEKEND EFFECT, a false idea widely accepted here on FR that Dems poll better on weekends. OTOH, that belief could be correct if the pollster in question uses the distribution of R/D/I based on who answered the phone.
So what are they doing now? Who knows.
Well, as you have probably noticed, this so called turnout model is all over the map these days but is almost universally predicting a huge Dem turnout compared to the number of Republicans who will actually vote.
And what is the rationale for applying this Dem favored model? Answer: The hoped for effect of propaganda on the voting population.
That propaganda campaign worked even here on FR for a few days. I think it's fading as we dig out the facts about these polls.
That independent number has to worry the Democrats, a lot.
apparently at this point there are more registered GOP than Dems. So this poll is pretty whacked.
Even with the sample stacked against him, Romney should be up 15 - 20 points! The real unemployment rate is much higher than even the critics claim, and all that is being done is 0bama is campaigning and fundraising!
I see the average idiot on the street and the libs on my facebook page.
I have no doubt Romney is losing. Romney is running the worst possible campaign imaginable and inspires zero confidence whatsoever.
I’ll vote for him any day over RR, but this campaign really sucks TBH.
I am disgusted.
CNN/ORC is a joke. Vinod Gupta is the owner of ORC, and special good buddy of Bill Clinton’s. The guy will do anything to make the Dems look good. Proof was when he screwed over the stockholders of his other company to fund the purchase of ORC so he could manipulate the numbers for the Clintons.
They would not just call 1000 people and take whoever answered the phone, because you might get 1000 Ds or 1000Rs by accident.
I agree. Now, Rush and some Freepers think it is to depress turnout. I don’t think so. Rs are NOT going to be dissuaded from voting, and Is aren’t paying attention much.
I offered this theory a couple of months ago: I think they KNOW Romney is going to win pretty big in the EC (310-320). It might be closer in pop vote, but he’ll win that. I think the media will say, “How can this BE? ALL the polls told us that Obama was leading? This must be Republican dirty tricks!” as a means of discrediting and delegitimatizing Romney’s presidency as they tried to do with Bush in 2000 (”selected,” not “elected”).
If his ads suck, and if he doesn't take it to Bambi starting at the end of the next couple of weeks, and he has a horrible first debate, then we can panic (and be disgusted).
It's not like we shouldn't get used to being disappointed with the Mittster, right?
It's simply too early to throw in the towel.
I hate to throw a wet towel on any of this but something has always struck me when claims of oversampling are made to make a poll look good:
Isn’t it reasonable to assume that when a particular group is oversampled, the pollster in question takes that into account, and gives the group undersampled more weight?
For example, if the Republicans are undersampled by say 5%, their final tally is given 5% more weight than the Democrats.
That’s how it’s done in certain areas of science I can attest. For example, if one particular protein shows more expression in a certain experiment on a Western blot, such expression levels are normalized against a more common protein like actin. If the actin levels demonstrate lower levels in the experimental conditions (an oversampling if you will of the experimental condition), then the experimental level is reported as a function of the actin, that is, it’s divided by the amount of actin (similarly for the control), so as to normalize all levels based on how much total protein was actually loaded onto the gel (the Western blot).
So again, isn’t it reasonable to assume these pollsters are doing a similar kind of normalization?
Bambi has played the race card with such virulence, the hatred and violence that could be released after election day will be the thing the MSM uses to deligitimize R/R.
“That’s not a poll, that’s propaganda.”
That is what polling was always intended to be from day one. It was always propaganda because the general public believes in numbers. Most never look at the details and even those that do can’t interpret them properly.
Liberalism will never produce real progress by any true measure. It is based upon arrogance; so, it never objectively evaluates the outcomes of its actions. That is why the “progressives” (communists) only offer excuses when their ideas fail, and all of their ideas ALWAYS fail.
OStinkBugula and DemoRat propaganda just like I’ve been suspecting.
Their sampling does not reflect reality which is a nearly 5% advantage for the GOP in voter registration. They are just trying to get nervous nelly weak minded people in our party to get discouraged and not show up to vote. We must get faces like flint with this crowd. This election is war and for the survival of the republic. May God curse these evil vermin and bring them to utter defeat.
I know. That’s certainly something they are looking for.
Makes no difference. Some folks will continue to have large mudslides in their diapers when they see these PHONY polls revealing an Obama advantage.
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