Posted on 10/21/2004 11:04:28 AM PDT by Wolfstar
I reposted this because, (1) it's timely, (2) the polls in this presidential election are all over the place, and (3) the "internal" questions — meaning all those except the pure horserace question — are confusing, to say the least.
It's hard to ask people who care so much about the outcome of this presidential election to ignore the polls, but that's precisely what we all should do. Instead of wringing our hands about polls, we all ought to be doing everything possible to get the vote out on our side. That's what will count in the end.
Besides, haven't we all learned to be skeptical of media honesty thanks to the Dan Rather incident and similar incidents in recent years? We should be equally as skeptical of their polling honesty.
Ping: If folks could only get over their addiction to polls, I think the Republic would be much better off.
not to mention people lie! LOL
"The Gallup polls taken between October 12 and 16, have been very strong predictors. They have identified the winner in every election since 1952"
Senators rarely win, Its been over 40 years. JFK was the last and just barely.
Amazingly only * three* incumbents have lost in the last *90* years, *all* had bad economies dogging them.
Economic indicators favor re-election of the incumbent. Eight forecasting models are unanimous in predicting Bush will defeat Democrat John Kerry http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a1OhVbkS8pp4&refer=us
No wartime President seeking re-election has lost, *ever*.
All sucessful Democrat challengers in recent history have been Governors from the south.
No Democrat has been sucessful in recent history without carrying the south. The south is solid Bush country.
No challenger has won without at least an 8 point gallup convention bump. Kerrys went negative. Bush has inarguably now a signifigant bounce. And the media had told us everyone was decided already.
Gallup Approval numbers for Bush are in re-election territory.
Not too meaningful but interesting...If the market is up on the last day of an incumbents convention, 80% of them were re-elected. Market was up real good on the last day of the RNC.
Kerrys wife is a kook. Its not an indicator, but must be mentioned anyways. http://strangecosmos.com/images/content/102440.jpg
Bush wins the Scholastic poll another very accurate predictor. Scholastic has been conducting polls since 1940, with predictions only wrong in two close elections: 1948 when students chose Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman, and 1960, predicting Richard Nixon would beat John Kennedy.
"For the last six presidential elections, since Ronald Reagan's first victory, sales of rubber Halloween masks caricaturing the Republican and Democratic candidates have predicted the next president, according to an Internet costume seller. President Bush is leading so far this year. As of Thursday, 55 percent of the masks sold were of Bush and 45 percent of John Kerry, said Daniel Haight, chief operating officer of New Berlin-based Buyseasons, which owns Buycostumes.com. "The mask sales have been 100 percent accurate," Haight said. "So far we have no reason to believe this year will be any different."
Pew Research ......... http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=750 Post-9/11 Parity "The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and Bush's response to the attacks, marked a major turning point in party identification. Republican party identification rose to 30%, while the Democrats fell to 31%, putting the parties into a virtual tie for the allegiance of the public. Because Republicans traditionally turn out to vote in higher numbers than do Democrats, the current division in party affiliation among the public could provide the GOP with a slight electoral advantage, all other things being equal."
I resemble that!
My pet peeve regarding polls is the common misconception that margin of error is an indicator of accuracy. MOE is a measure of the polls precision. The precision of a poll or any measuring technique or device refers to how repeatable the method or tool is in obtaining the same result if used repeatably. Accuracy on the other hand refers to whether the poll is correct, that is does it correctly reflect reality. A poll (if the sample size is large enough) can have a MOE of <1%, but if the methodology of the poll is wrong and the sample is biased, the poll can have an error of almost any percentage. MOE is therefore a lower limit on how accurate a poll can be, not an upper limit as most people believe.
I don't know about nationally, but I do know in CA you have almost 20 percent of the electorate who are registered Independents and the majority of them won't make up their minds until the eve of or the day of the election...
and the Independents turn elections in CA...
It's too bad W doesn't campaign out here because I think he would have a good chance of winning the state...
there are only about 43% registered 'Rats in the state compared to 35% Republicans...and most of the 'Rats are concentrated in LA & SF metro areas.
Note the LA Times poll results for Aug. 16-21 (22% for Arnold), compared with Survey USA's results for Aug. 23-25 (45% for Arnold) -- a 23% difference. Note again the Sept. 6-10 LA Times poll (25% for Arnold), compared with SUSA for about the same period, Sept. 6-8 (39% for Arnold) -- again, a major disparity. Because the Survey USA poll nailed the final result, and always showed Arnold ahead and recall favored, one almost has to conclude that Arnold was never behind in that race, and the other polls, particularly the LA Times, were into fabricating polling results.
The LA Times polls in particular are, in my opinion, a case study in how the media tries to influence opinion through bogus polling results.
What has puzzled me about this campaign is that a clear left-winger, pacifist nut like Kerry would be running so close to Bush. By all accounts, Kerry should be running 20 points behind Bush. Why isn't he? There are two possible explanations: 1) As Evan Thomas of Newsweek has said, the media is promoting Kerry, and this will make a 15% difference in support for Kerry; or 2) the polls are bogus.
Polls are, by their very nature, calculated guesses, sometimes with a scientific basis, and with varying degrees of sophistication. Scientific wild-(a**) guesses, in fact, commonly referred to "SWAG".
There are going to be so many challenges to the results of the poll to be recorded as of November 2, 2004, that the results may not be known for weeks after the final ballot is cast, opened, and recorded. The first challenge will come on "equal representation", potential voters who did not successfully register to vote, followed by complaints of registered voters who were denied the opportunity to vote, inaccuracies in tallying the vote, and errors in certification of the vote totals.
Thousands, perhaps millions, of erroneous or outright fraudulent registrations have been submitted to election board offices all over America, and the sheer volume was intended to overwhelm the capabilities of the registration process.
Nobody who is aware and still breathing should have problems with being able to cast a ballot. Almost all states have either early or absentee voting programs, a number of these states have both. There is a firm cutoff date on the exercise of either of these two options.
Questions about accuracies in vote count have resulted in the near standardization of just a few voting systems, and almost complete abandonment of tallying votes by hand count. Yet there are those who, for whatever reason, still choose not to believe a mechanical tally.
There may be errors in a mechanically measured vote count, but almost always, a hand count has a greater potential for error. Yet there are those who demand a hand count as the only legally acceptable method of settling disputed vote totals.
Precisely. Polling is supposed to be scientific. Well, in science, no hypothesis can be considered proven until multiple independent researchers arrive at the same results. Rarely are two polls ever alike, even when they are taken during the same period of time and are about exactly the same subject.
All of what you posted, taken together, is equally as valid as any professionally done (and expensive) poll.
AMEN to this brother! I have been suggesting that folks get off their poll habit for months now. JUST MAKE IT HAPPEN IN NOVEMBER!
My first pet peeve regarding polls is that they are the modern equivalent of reading entrails for omens. My second pet peeve about them is that media polls are used to manipulate public opinion, not merely report it.
Thanks for the impressive rundown. As Sean Hannity would say, "Let not your heart be troubled." Encouraging indeed.
LOL!!! That's the spirit.
I agree with everything you said in #10, except that I think many independents don't make their minds up until they actually get in the voting booth. There, at long last, they have to [blank] or get off the pot -- that is, unless they wake up on election day and decide not to vote.
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