If there is one thing that history has taught anyone who has bothered to pay attention it is that polling lies when it is taken to be looking at results weeks before a national election. From the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman!" headlines right up until the most recent election, when John Kerry was said to hold an 11 point lead in some polls with just weeks to go, polls lie, and I believe that they do it on purpose. Just as there is a quite obvious liberal news media bias that paints Democratic candidate Barack Obama in bright, positive, shining colors and portrays Republican candidate John McCain in a negative light, so are polling results skewed by the political agendas of the groups behind them. In that 1948 example, Harry Truman was seen trailing Thomas Dewey by anywhere from a 5 to 15 point margin, with Truman actually ending up on top by just over 4 points. After that embarrassing result for pollsters, the powers that be within their organizations trashed old systems and rolled out new ones in attempts to ensure that the same problems did not materialize again. David Moore in his 'The Super Pollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America' has stated: "Poorly worded questions and unrepresentative samples continually skew polls results. It is important that the validity of survey results be questioned and poll watchers need to always be attentive to the source of the poll and to the methods used in polling." Despite all of their attempts at refining their polling methods, and in spite of the occasional result that was in the end close to their polling samples, the fact remains that public opinion polling is at best an inexact science, and at worst a propaganda tool. Public opinion polls in this current election cycle have regularly shown Obama to hold anywhere from a 5-10 point lead, with John McCain only taking small, short leads and none of those recently. That is pretty incredible when you consider that virtually every reliable source continues to say that the country is divided evenly down the middle between conservative and liberal ideologies, and that the 'undecideds' are generally a myth in any significant numbers. I have a poll up at my own website here which shows McCain ahead by a 76-18 margin, with 6 percent stating support for an 'other' candidate. Anyone who wants to shill for the McCain campaign could easily see my poll and make the truthful statement: "I have seen some polls that show McCain way ahead of Obama." Sure you have, if you looked at mine, but my poll is in no way scientific, as the majority of folks who pass through the site are expected to be conservatives. The fact is that this election is not going to be decided until the voters go to cast their actual ballots on election day in 2 1/2 weeks. Until then the majority of polls, with liberal agendas behind them, will continue to skew the results towards Obama in an attempt to kill enthusiasm among Republicans. They want to plant the thought in Republican minds that "Hey, McCain can't win anyway, so I'm going to stay home." Nothing could be further from the truth, as George W. Bush's 2004 victory over John Kerry clearly showed. As of today, the Gallup poll shows Obama with a slim 2 point lead, basically nothing in an industry that says it's results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3-4 percent. Rasmussen has Obama up by 4, Zogby by 5. In other words, when factoring in their own error margins, the race could be anywhere from a 9 point Obama lead all the way down to a close McCain victory. I once heard someone say that they didn't need a weather man to tell them it was raining, all they needed to do was stick their head out the window. Likewise, I don't need some agenda-driven polling organization to tell me that this election is going to ultimately be decided by 2 points or less, and that it could go either way. The fact is that you need to get up and go out and vote on election day, and the fact is also that in more instances than not you should not believe the polls.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Don't Believe the Polls
If there is one thing that history has taught anyone who has bothered to pay attention it is that polling lies when it is taken to be looking at results weeks before a national election. From the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman!" headlines right up until the most recent election, when John Kerry was said to hold an 11 point lead in some polls with just weeks to go, polls lie, and I believe that they do it on purpose. Just as there is a quite obvious liberal news media bias that paints Democratic candidate Barack Obama in bright, positive, shining colors and portrays Republican candidate John McCain in a negative light, so are polling results skewed by the political agendas of the groups behind them. In that 1948 example, Harry Truman was seen trailing Thomas Dewey by anywhere from a 5 to 15 point margin, with Truman actually ending up on top by just over 4 points. After that embarrassing result for pollsters, the powers that be within their organizations trashed old systems and rolled out new ones in attempts to ensure that the same problems did not materialize again. David Moore in his 'The Super Pollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America' has stated: "Poorly worded questions and unrepresentative samples continually skew polls results. It is important that the validity of survey results be questioned and poll watchers need to always be attentive to the source of the poll and to the methods used in polling." Despite all of their attempts at refining their polling methods, and in spite of the occasional result that was in the end close to their polling samples, the fact remains that public opinion polling is at best an inexact science, and at worst a propaganda tool. Public opinion polls in this current election cycle have regularly shown Obama to hold anywhere from a 5-10 point lead, with John McCain only taking small, short leads and none of those recently. That is pretty incredible when you consider that virtually every reliable source continues to say that the country is divided evenly down the middle between conservative and liberal ideologies, and that the 'undecideds' are generally a myth in any significant numbers. I have a poll up at my own website here which shows McCain ahead by a 76-18 margin, with 6 percent stating support for an 'other' candidate. Anyone who wants to shill for the McCain campaign could easily see my poll and make the truthful statement: "I have seen some polls that show McCain way ahead of Obama." Sure you have, if you looked at mine, but my poll is in no way scientific, as the majority of folks who pass through the site are expected to be conservatives. The fact is that this election is not going to be decided until the voters go to cast their actual ballots on election day in 2 1/2 weeks. Until then the majority of polls, with liberal agendas behind them, will continue to skew the results towards Obama in an attempt to kill enthusiasm among Republicans. They want to plant the thought in Republican minds that "Hey, McCain can't win anyway, so I'm going to stay home." Nothing could be further from the truth, as George W. Bush's 2004 victory over John Kerry clearly showed. As of today, the Gallup poll shows Obama with a slim 2 point lead, basically nothing in an industry that says it's results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3-4 percent. Rasmussen has Obama up by 4, Zogby by 5. In other words, when factoring in their own error margins, the race could be anywhere from a 9 point Obama lead all the way down to a close McCain victory. I once heard someone say that they didn't need a weather man to tell them it was raining, all they needed to do was stick their head out the window. Likewise, I don't need some agenda-driven polling organization to tell me that this election is going to ultimately be decided by 2 points or less, and that it could go either way. The fact is that you need to get up and go out and vote on election day, and the fact is also that in more instances than not you should not believe the polls.
