Posted on 01/01/2008 4:07:20 PM PST by amordei
I support Fred Thompson as do a far majority of FreeRepublic members. However, polls of Iowa voters, NH voters, national voters, etc. all place Fred way back in the pack. Why is that? Is it bad polling, e.g., oversampling non-Republicans, unlikely voters, etc.? I just can't believe that we are that far from standard Republican opinion. If we are, may God have mercy on us all. ;->
Polling isn’t for gauging public opinion so much than shaping it.
Agreed. But here’s something to contemplate: IF most of these poll results are derived from telephone polling, consider the fact that most people under the age of 30 do not have land-lines. They have cell phones, and as a result of this, they aren’t being polled. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that this demographic includes most people under the age of 40. Free Republic seems to have quite a wide age representation so I’m not sure what this really means. But, I think it’s significant.
We’re smarter.
Most of these polls are biased and innaccurate. They do not use proper sampling technique and are sponsored by MSM companies that are strongly biased against conservatives. I have never in my life been contacted by a polling organization and nobody I know has either. I have never heard of any “real people” ever being contacted by these MSM sponsored polls.
What about Illinois without Cook County?
Significantly saner.
Go to your preferences and turn on "subscription bar". It drove me nuts trying to find it.
We’re all Freepers and have been drawn here due to our conservatism and being around like-minded folks. Consequently, most of us will root for the most conservative candidates.
But, because we’re conservatives and associate with other Freepers, we tend to see things thru a particular lens. Not unlike folks who spend little time outside the beltway and see things thru that lens.
Unfortunately, the vast unwashed masses don’t spend much time watching cable news shows, Freepeing or living in the beltway. They get their views fed to them in soundbites by a biased media and an active entertainment industry. They also are influenced by unions and educators.
It’s our job to be activists to spread our $0.02.
Freepers are better informed that the average person.
Go to the Forum main page and scroll down.
Who cares what a pollster thinks? Who cares what 10 percent of Iowans think?
“Why is that?”
sheep...and that works in all ways....
Yup, it’s odd...for instance, the polls show McCain with numbers as good as Thompson’s but here on FR you could not elect McPain to be graveyard shift admin moderator.
I think you have a good point. I know a lot of people who used to donate to the Republican party, and then the party didn’t stand up for things they believed in so they quit donating to the party. They donate to individual candidates that they believe in. Like Pat Toomey versus Arlen Specter, that one blew a fuse with me. President Bush campaigning for Specter against a conservative. He may have had his reasons, but conservatives didn’t like it. Also the immigration bill and President Bush’s flippant attitude about it.
He’s not worthless, but he’s not a conservative and I am.
I posted this thread a while back:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1936827/posts
It was about polling methods and whether there were problems since so many no longer have landlines and just cell phones. Who is going to want to use up cell phone minutes to answer a bunch of polling questions? And if they do it online it can be spammed. I don’t know how they can do a poll these days and have it be accurate.
But in 2004, I thought the polls were wrong, and they were a lot closer than I thought they were. I want to believe the polls are wrong, but I am preparing myself for disappointment in case they are right.
‘Cause people here are maybe 10 times more informed?
In any event I suspect you would find that the FReeper voting results that show Fred on top are not an accurate sample of the Republican Party as the focus of the web site is on conservatism and not any particular party (I had assumed most FReepers already knew this).
Misinformation works. Timmy Russert’s Florida fiasco was a “Gore won...You lost...you repubs can forget about voting now”.
How is it that Pollsters come up with so varied results??????
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