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Are You the One? Polling
Monday, January 14, 2008
Mark Blumenthal, who runs the website, Pollster.com, looks at why pollsters get it wrong, how polling affects democracy, and the results of our polling project with The Huffington Post.
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Comments
The effect polling has should be rather apparent. When the 2008 election started (ten or fifteen years ago now it seems), we were shown lots of polls showing a number of candidates with insignificant numbers. What does that do to us psychologically? We decide that this person is irrelevant and thus we must make our decision from the narrow band of people in the top two or three slots. If we don't, we think we're just wasting our time, and given that fact, we probably will be.
Of course, there are exceptions as Huckabee proves, but for the most part those top slots haven't fluctuated much.
I agree completely that polls have a strong effect on voting - in a variety of ways.
Major media outlets, for example, also follow (and feed into) polling by disqualifying some candidates from debates due to polling cut-offs. These can in fact be quite arbitrary and can even be changed in the middle of the game, as in the case of Dennis Kucinich being first invited and then excluded from the same NBC debate.
Brian, last week you had as a guest the only pollster i've heard say that the pollsters did get the vote for Senator Obama RIGHT (thus, refuting the Bradley Effect speculation by many other commentators). what they missed, instead, was the surge for Senator Clinton.
this is just one more example of why your show is indispensible.
the media used the national polls for months (WNYC included) to make the discussion only about Obama and HRC...thus making them seem to be the only viable candidates. seems to me you can't separate the use of the polls from the way the media treats candidates and where the money and votes ultimately. the big fiction that even media analysts like Howrad Kurtz perpetuate is that the media doesn't actually INFLUENCE the process with their coverage.
the media decided that it would be Obama Vs. Hillary a long time ago, and that is what we got. the polls themselves aren't the problem it's the overall nature of the coverage, and the way that the press is influenced by them etc. etc.
I don't think that most intelligent people decide their candidate based on what everybody else wants, but on the other hand, they don't want to back a loser. If they're going to give money and time to a campaign, they want them to have a decent chance to win. So they may not say "Oh! 51% of people prefer this candidate so he must be the best!" But they will say "I kind of like this guy who's polling 2%, but he doesn't have a chance in hell, so I'll go with the lesser of two evils in the top candidates."
Ask Blumenthal why response rates are no longer reported in results. See for example the explanation of the poll reported in today's NYT.
Obama lost by 2pts with the same delegate count actually delivered.
That represents means just 1% of people move from Obama to HRC or, 2% of people who think Obama is secure, move to McCain to avoid Huckabee.
He was to have lost by double digits until the turbulence in the last hours. Relative to the previous weeks expectations, he won.
How the media overspins (both Iowa and NH) is the problem.
Polling coverage takes the perspective of which candidate is doing the best job of duping the public into voting for them. EG. how has Clinton's crying effected women, how has Edward's reaction to said crying effected women, etc.
I'm about 99% decided but I still want to learn about my candidate and the competitors!
I can't wait for all of this political talk to end so that normal life can resume. Our political proccess is so long and unwieldy I tune out all the minutia.
The overuse of polls by major media outlets is lazy cheap journalism. Reporting and editorializing on polls saves the media the bother of reporting detailed stories about major and minor candidates allowing voters access to varied stories rather than unreliable data.
I agree with just about everything other cementers have said thus far and think there is real value in the "Are You the One?" series; however, I do think it is disingenuous to say the show does not follow the horserace when the premise of the series appears to be following the horserace with a focus on the perceived frontrunner(s).
Our response to polls hardly illuminate our human nature but rather our animal nature. As Drew Westen claims in "The Political Brain" when it comes to politics we do not use human part of our brain.
Polls show us where the herd we associated ourselves with is going. And we feel emotional pressure to follow the herd.
Post 7:
That's absolutely right! The media obsesses too much over the technical winners rather than examining things in context.
However, that said, the pollsters were dead wrong, and I think asking why they were dead wrong is not skewing things. The polls were completely unrealistic, but the question is why?
There was a small study a few years ago out the University of Michigan (title: A Downward Spiral of Cynicism, I think). Though small, the study showed how there would be a market for polling and strategy reporting among partisans, but that even the mention of a poll in campaign reporting may decrease voter interest, turnout and even civic activity in unaffiliated and those without a college education. Perhaps there should be a concerted effort to report polling data separately for those partisans who are interested w/o turning off the rest of the public.
I freely admit that I AM a poll junkie. I love to read the results and to compare the various major polls with each other (Zogby, Rasmussen, ARG, NYT, WaPo, etc.), and to compare national results with the in-state results of Primary/Caucus states.
BUT aside from curiosity and a tendency to succumb to the peep-show titillation of exit-polling, I use poll results to help me understand my own opinion in a, hopefully, benign and constructive way. I look for results that show either a statistically significant change from the previous poll, show a consistent trend, or show a candidate to be more or less favored than my own opinion. If I find either scenario I then go on a research hunt to see what the correlation is between the poll result and the events between that poll and the prior poll. Or I take a closer look at the candidate for whom my opinion differs significantly from the poll's implication.
Post[13]
HRC just has that level of absolute control over the media.
... just joking.
I've never been so happy not to have a landline phone...
I think the media is obsessed with polls because they believe that is what people are interested in. We seem to think that the media is this pro-active cabal, when they are just businesses who are reacting to what they think you are interested in.
Let's face the facts, most of us listen and give money to WNYC because this is the kind of programming we want to hear. However, not everyone has the same tastes in news or programming.
Our system is very good, it delivers the politicians, the political process, the candidates and the media that the aggregate population deserves.
You can spend a few hours on google and read all the position papers, review the votes and records of all the candidates. I doubt whether most voters do this.
I was once called for a survey and I was dismayed at how they manipulated the questions. I assume it was some kind of Republican thinktank conducting the survey because I was asked: "Do I think that national security is important AND do I support the war in Iraq? Yes or no?"
I nearly flipped out on the poor woman for whom this was just a job. She agreed with me that it was absurd to glob all that into one yes or no question, but perhaps she was just trying to be polite.
The representativeness of who takes these polls is a big deal! I'm under 30 and don't have a land line. The few of my friends who do are likely different types of voters because they are more suburban/conservative etc.
Also think about who actually answers these! When was the last time any of us wanted to be bothered by any stranger on the phone. The polls can at best predict the votes of the bored and lonely.
Electibility is an useless measure, this assumes that I can get inside somebody's head, very few professionals can do this well, much less the average person. I certainly do not profess to be smart enough to know what the other guy is thinking. Therefore, I say (unless you are a professional profiler) go with the candidate that is the one for you. We all know what happened to the Democrats in the 2004 presidential election when they nominated the guy who they thought was the most electible instead of the candidate that they felt passionate about.
Here is yet another example of democrats going headlong into self destructive BS. If there was a reason to reveal latent rascism, i could see a reason for this back and forth. But the fact is, both Clinton and Obama are on the same side, both are clearly not rascist and both are intent on improving racial issues. I think also, it is no mistake to talk about the fact that it is up to "the Decider", be it the President or Congress, but in any case, ELECTED leadership to change laws, rascist and others. The Civil Rights movement involved great leadership and many peoples' involvement but just like Moses, the repeated petitions and actions had no lasting resonance until the "Pharoah" or lawmaker declared the change and made it law. So I really don't understand why Hillary is being faulted. She is absolutely right to underscore the importance of getting the right Legislators into positions of power. any intimation th
When do we get to have a poll on if the 'are you the one' music should stay until february?
Well, I was already critical in my other post so I didn't mention the "Are You the One?" music, but I agree Justen, hearing that clip (seemingly) all week makes me want to pull my hair out.
as particpation in polls in voluntary participants are self-selecting to some degree. can this skew results in favor of candidates with more passionate, persistant supporters?
I've always been a bit suspicious of polls for the simple reason that I've never taken part in one - I am a young-ish woman who has lived in Manhattan for about 10 years and not once have I ever been asked who I intend to vote for or how I feel about any political issues. I suspect many polls are taken in statistically "average" places (in terms of population broken down by age, race, income, etc.) but why should we assume that the people living in those places have "average" views?
In regards to the polls or any media discussion, there is a big elephant in the room, and it is one that concerns everyone--tthat is the matter of the vulnerability of the voting machines. There is the ongoing challenge of fast-growing and quick updated transformations in all technology, and this is going to continue. At the very least, there needs to be ongoing discussion--in the forefront, about the particular technology of the voting machines, against vulnerabilities of outside manipulation and hackers. Just last night I heard a program on Public radio about California's efforts to protect their sensitive technologies; unfortunately they have not been able to secure their voting machines in time for this election--and this, according to the commentator, is the state of most of the country. (The voting technology is as sensitive, and possibly more so, than most other sensitive technoloty today.) Keeping up the security of voting technology, even as this technology advances is vital, or else all our political discussion is moot. I have not heard one program on the subject. I think there needs to be an ongoing discussion of it. If the technology is getting beyond the ability to control, then lets resort to surer means, or do something than just hope for the best. This is a major national concern that is looming over everything else. It needs to be addressed continually because it is the BIG ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM of all media discussion on politics in the U.S. today.
I would like to suggest that WNYC or some other such trustworthy and nonpartisan institution introduce a service similar to that offered by http://www.dehp.net/candidate/ where a voter answers a series of questions about given issues and how strongly one feels about them, and the person is matched up with the candidate that most accurately reflects those views according to their stated opinions in the public record. This might not be foolproof, but it is sure a heck of a lot more useful than popularity contests based on other popularity contests.
Polling methodology is never revealed. Who knows what the response rates were in the NH polls. None are published because they're horrendously low. You can't get a sufficient response rate in 2-3 day polling. I challenge the polling companies to reveal this information.
How, exactly does polling serve the public interest? How is time spent discussing polls superior to time spent in other ways?
Please ask those questions!
I am so tired of the media hyping things about the candidates with half truths. If you spent time actually looking at what they stand for rather than blowing every little thing up for a two-three day cycle it would be a true service to the voting populace
Please see this opinion of the MLK-Hillary bruhaha.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/obama-needs-a-history-les_b_81377.html
Anyone who lived through the civil rights struggle during the Johnson era would immediately recognize that if LBJ had not had years of Senate experience pushing bills through that body, the civil rights law would NEVER have been passed.
To accuse Hillary of dissing MLK because of her statement is a travesty and fodder for the Hillary haters. It is even worse that you,who are usually balanced, would contribute to this historical inaccuracy.
This thread is closed.
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