Posted on 06/16/2004 2:08:25 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
A recent Los Angeles Times poll showing President Bush trailing Democrat John Kerry by 7 percentage points used a sample skewed toward Democrats.
According to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, the sample surveyed was made up of 38 percent Democrats and 25 percent Republicans – a difference not representative of the actual electorate.
In the past three presidential elections, the margin for Democrats in party identification ranged from 3 percent to 4 percent – well below the Times' 13 percent.
The core problem with the survey, Roll Call said, is the Times' Republican sample of 25 percent – a full 10 percentage points lower than it should be.
The Times defended its poll, which was released last week: "Party ID is a moving variable that changes from one election to another, and weighting by party registration makes no sense nationally because many states don't have their voters' register by party."
Wrote David Winston in Roll Call: "The number that really jumped out to most analysts was the poll's finding that the Democrats currently maintain a generic-ballot lead of 19 points. I've been doing congressional polling for nearly 25 years, and I've never seen a generic lead anywhere close to this.
"Yet despite these staggering figures, there was no story in the Times saying the Democrats were clearly going to win the House or take back the Senate. If their generic were true, that's the kind of sea change we would see and that's new. But no other polling operation even comes close to that number."
Winston is president of The Winston Group, a Republican polling firm. He credited the Times with releasing the sampling data so analysts could "understand the survey's bias."
Here ya go, my friend...
Now that's what I call fair and balanced.
heh, heh, heh :-)
Where the Los Angeles Times gains credence for this discrepency, is that registered democrats in-state far outnumber the republicans. This results from the democrats running almost constant registration drives that actually exclude republicans. I actually participated in one of these efforts years ago. Those registering were told not to register republicans. My wife was participating as part of a class project. I joined her, then found out what it was all about.
For all these efforts, the democrats still can't get the numbers out on election day. Registered republicans registered because they are motivated by their convictions to do so. For this same reason they show up on election day, to vote.
Every once in a while someone comes up with the idea of running registering drives. IMO those efforts are essentially worthless. If people aren't motivated to get registered, they won't be motivated to vote.
As the writer noted, the Times ignored the actual turnout to present this biased survey. I'm not as generous as the writer of this article. The Times knows that people won't read the small print. They are trying to crate an atmosphere where republicans will stay home on election day.
This same tactic comes up each election day, as the Times announces poll after poll showing republicans will lose in a sweeping defeat, only to see that prediction go down in flames by as much as 17%.
The Times has gotten so bad, it's like reading Mad Magazine, or watching a parody of itself on SNL.
Bingo. Though the methodology isn't quite as skewed, the same conclusion can be drawn about vaunted New York Times/CBS "News", which typically give Democrats significant turnout advantage.
Vote in this online Presidential Election (Dave Leip's Atlas of US Presidential Elections)
LA Times latest NATIONWIDE poll sampling:
democrats ---- 38% - oversampled!
Republicans -- 25%
_________________
SUB TOTAL -- 63%
Independents --- ?%
Communists ----- ?%
Greenies ------- ?%
__________________
SUB TOTAL ----- 37% ?
TOTAL POLL ---- 100% ?
- Call my picky, but don't polls have to add up to somewhere near 100%?
Excellent post. Thanks.
Imagine the liberal reaction had the survey sample been the other way around -- 38% Republican, 25% Democrat, showing Bush burying Kerry in a landslide. No would take such a poll seriously. L.A. Times polls deserve the same contempt.
while searching for a source on this (i didnt find one, but i didnt expect to, as yahoo most likely would not link me to aol....) i found a website devoted to "left coast thinker"s
in it, it lambasted Pres Bush on several issues, and called our military personell liars. it claimed that Berg was killed by Saddams family-according to Iraqi police-
then went on to claim OUR TROOPS must be lying, simply because the iraqi police said other wise!
any way, i looked through it searching for credible evidence... im still looking for them to site any sources on some of their more outrageous claims....
sorry, just FYI to all of you.
My boss is a feminist Democrat and called me in her office yesterday to talk politics. (she hates to admit she learns things.) Mostly we went at it over Reagan. But she told me she had little enthusiasm for Kerry. I'm not pushing, just hoping that by November, we'll have had enough conversations to get her to take the plunge for Bush. Currently she hates him.
Tricky little devils, these LIBERAL MEDIA DEMOFACISTS now, ain't they?
I am surprised the WH, WT, NewsMax, Drudge, NY Post took so long to jump on this over obvious over sampling of democrats; it also cast a huge cloud over those democrats they included in their polling methods and totals and results and raises many questions about how they disqualified or just skipped or dumped Republicans.
I started posting the pre-rigged CBS poll just after it came out.
7:5 ratio polled - CBS
35% democrat polled 35x4=140
25% Republicans polled 25x4=100
The LA Times poll I finally found had a 13% oversampling
Then I found it was 38% democrats sampled to 25% Republicans
for comparison only:
38%x4=152% ("I gave it 152%!!!!!")
25%x4=100%
6:4 ratio polled - LA Times
Neither the CBS or LAT polls allow for electoral college, oversampling, urban polling (recall the CA RECALL & Arnold & the last LAT poll?), cell phones, people who actually work, and many other factors.
Those do not have to be factored into every poll or analysis but oversampling is way overboard favoring democrats and Kerry.
That is just not how the nation votes, even in popular votes in the November elections.
Over sampling "errors" at 2-4 times the acceptable margin of error in polling.
"COOKING WITH ZOGBY"
"GOURMET POLLING WITH CBS"
"THE LA TIMES COOKBOOK"
"THE NYT PUSH-POLL PLATTER"
But in 2000 agore & GW Bush were within just 1% and algore claimed to have only 500,000 more in popular votes which would probably win in France or Germany as they have no electoral college.
Sampling NY state is a joke anyway in a national poll. It's a Kerry-Kohn lock.
Sampling Texas is a joke too in a national poll. It's a GW Bush lock.
But for spotting trends they are valuable.
The tradional states that run close are the important states plus states like NJ and MO where Bush is running well ahead of algore's polling and final votes.
I doubt if we will see that AOL poll on network TV or in any print media.
The results are the opposite of the CBS, LAT, Zogby, etc polls.
If GW wins by anything close to the AOL 10% all of these biased leftie polls and media polls will be laughed off as meaningless biased push-polls that failed to Kerry-Kohn the voters.
Polls run out of NYC tend to deliberately call people at home during working hours and in urban areas.
The LAT and CBS polls are like polling only Washington DC or downtown Detroit or South Central LA.
There the %s would be higher for dems but the end result is really the same. The public would get a pre-cooked media story that Kerry-Kohn-Kon is whipping GW Bush by big numbers. Poll after poll.
We saw this before in Carter vs Reagan and Mondale vs Reagan and Dukakis vs Bush #41.
But each election went the other way.
Clinton never got 50% in his elections. His first was only a dinky 43% against Perot and Bush #41.
That AOL online poll must have panicked the TV and print media, pollsters, union bosses, welfare royalty, illegal aliens, teachers unions, DNC, MoveOn.borg, Kerry & Ko., OBL, lefties, Commies (A.N.S.W.E.R.). Slick Willie (P.A.N.T.S.L.E.S.S.), Hillary (P.I.A.P.S), CPUSA, and National Socialists, Democrat Socialists and Inter-National-Socialists (INTERNAZIS) everywhere.
The latest USA poll from Florida is interesting. The Mason-Dixon polls have been fairly accurate.
The Zogby poll after his 2002 meltdown can only be judged by his Islamic ties, his democrat links, and his oddball polling methods which Zogby claims are "likely" voters and therefore the most accurate polling method.
"Most Unlikely" in 2002 Mr. Zogby!
You were less accurate than a chimp throwing darts at a fly 100 yards away.
This year the DOJ, INS, and FBI and "others" will be watching the voting places like hawks and the DOD will not allow our troops abroad and here to be stripped of their Constitutional voting rights and cast mailed-in ballots by a bunch of scummy democrat trial lawyers.
Attorney General John Ashcroft is just chomping at the bit to put shysters of any party in a federal pen and I do not mean Club Fed.
Anyone registering illegal aliens or convicted felons or double/triple residence/registration/voting (NY-FL or NY-FL-NC) is going to get whacked, arrested, charged, tried, convicted bigtime.
The Dakotas and other states will be heavily monitored for crooked registrations and voting by any native American Indian scams (SD-2002-Johnson).
No more "Torch-Lautenberg" garbage by a democrat Governor either.
WPB is a prime target for voter fraud as is Fort Lauderdale where some precincts voted 108% in 2000
Never buy a Bucket-O-Chicken from a liberal -
There will only be "hot" left wings.
Right "L"?
(an old liberal media aquaintance)
Everything the LA Times says is a lie.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
