I am not updating the offline poll graph any more. They have about as much value as a monkey throwing a dart. Have you seen this video yet?
youtube link
I hope this is the election that causes the American people to realize that these polls have no value and are entirely too easy to manipulate. Does anyone honestly believe that RP is going to get just 3% of the vote in ANY state? Of course not.. even in his "worst" states he will do better than 3-5%... Between the pollsters and the Old Media, one might think this race was all but decided and Huck or Rudy is going to take the prize... I for one refuse to believe it, and at the risk of having to eat my words in a couple weeks... These poll numbers are completely false and tell us how people will vote in much the same way as your horoscope tells you how your day will go.... that is to say, not at all, except by chance.
It's time to change from money bombs to voter bombs.. we need to get the voters to the polls to vote for Freedom, Peace and Ron Paul. Like most of you I have plenty of Democrat friends who support Barack O'Clinton... But many of them feel The War is the most important issue.. I've gotten a few of them to register republican to vote for Ron Paul as a personal favor to me... Telling them that it's best to have 2 anti-war candidates in the running for president... (I know RP is the only truly anti-war candidate in The Game, but that's not the point)... Even staunchly Democratic supporters can get behind the foreign policy of Ron Paul, and given the importance of the war this time around... that's your In. There is no race in the democratic party... it's either going to be HC or BO.. and in my experience, Democrats are happy enough with either... use that to your advantage... convince them... remind them... drive them to the polls... We can worry about their vote for president after we have the nomination. I think this strategy can work even for the most rabid Republican haters out there.. convince them that Ron Paul is most certainly against the neo-conservative establishment and their vote will actually make a difference in guaranteeing the end of the war and the attack on our personal Liberty and Freedom.
$100 million dollars will mean nothing if we can't get people to the primaries all over the country. Conversation is free... and time is running short... 17 days to Iowa... tick... tick... tick...
UPDATE: thanks to the anonymous poster who left this article in the comments... "2007 is likely to be the first calendar year in which U.S. households spend more on cell phone services"... to me, this just reaffirms the fact that current polling methodologies are fundamentally broken. I therefor reject their reality and substitute my own.
12/18/07
Offline Polls And Getting Out The Vote
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18 comments:
The polls are false. They are erasing him from the polls by not giving him any coverage in the news. I noticed in the youtube debate, he was given no questions, without questions you cannot give any answers.
I'm sure he will win in vote but that is rigged too. I wished he would of went independant ticket.
Nevertheless, I am a democrat and he has my vote. This will be the first time I ever cross over to vote republican. If McCain or Rudy win, we might as well put a gun to our heads for the next 4 years, same for Hilary.
could you start pushing forth the new years moneybomb put the signers up on your front page n' stuff, it'll be the last effort this quarter and it would be neat to get ron paul at 24 million, twice what he wanted? I've noticed that this site is one of the most significant ones in this revolution.
The following article made the front page of Drudge today and is extremely relevant to the polls:
"With Americans cutting the cord to their land lines, 2007 is likely to be the first calendar year in which U.S. households spend more on cell phone services [than land lines], industry and government officials say."
(Long link, scroll right)
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071218/cell_phone_spending.html?.v=6
I"m a realist and although I certainly hope that Dr. Paul defies the offline polls, I am still concerned that he will not gain enough of a percentage to really allow his campaign to move forward. And actually securing the nomination looks be a tremendous hurdle at the moment. The campaign, at both grassroots and headquarters level needs to concentrate on educating the general public about the solid beliefs of our candidate. Right now, he is being ignored by the mainstream press and it is affecting his bid to be taken seriously.
What's up with the graphs? They seem to be 6 hours off.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Very well written, Dan, and I posted it on the forum I hang out on.
Thanks!
Http://Pollster.com is run by professional pollsters who are well aware of the typical polling problems. They study and discuss the cell phone issue, young people's voter participation rates, the difficulties of polling the Democratic Iowa process, etc.
One area they haven't yet discussed, which I'm hoping to convince them to look into, is what happens when you have the rare candidate who truly does attract typical non-voters, to actually vote. I think Perot in '92 was the last time we had a huge pool of non-voters actually voting. I suspect the professional polls exclude these because they are actually unlikely to vote in a large proportion for virtually any candidate. But I also suspect that Ron Paul is one of those rare candidates who does have, at least among the early adopters, a very large contingent of likely voters who normally don't vote. This would be the first clear indication of the huge disconnect between the current professional polling results and Ron Paul's fundraising.
Penn & Teller tell us all we need to know about polls.
"Are you ready to vote for RP in the primaries?"
Only 61% of here are registered to vote?!
How do we envision winning this election if the hard core of Ron Paul voters are not even well positioned to vote for him?
Please tell me I'm misreading the poll on this blog.
Oops I mean 82%. Still not good.
Dan, am I the only one having trouble seeing the poll numbers with the text color and background colors the way they are?
Of course I believe the polls are worthless. There is a huge gap between the internet polls, straw polls on one hand and the traditional ones on the other. Not to mention the fervor of the Ron Paul supporters. And there is no media outlet addressing this discrepancy.
What is disturbing to me, however, is that by constantly portraying Ron Paul as being low in the polls and by not giving him that much media attention, they are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. When Joe American listens to this stuff, he will feel compelled to select from the "top tier" candidates since either a)He hasn't heard of Ron Paul or b) Ron Paul doesn't have a chance to win to begin with (so why waste their vote).
Hopefully, this will change when RP wins/places well in Iowa and NH. It should be an interesting few weeks.
Hopefully this $18M will translate into a lot of votes in the early primaries. But I'd like to point out that if Ron Paul wins in New Hampshire and does well in Iowa, those votes will surely re-translate into donations in a big way. Even stingy (or broke) supporters like myself will be willing to eat rice and beans for weeks straight if necessary in order to donate bucks to the campaign.
I predict that once RP supporters are assured that our candidate has a real chance of winning the nomination after doing well in these early primaries, the campaign won't have to think about money again, except how to spend it fast enough.
Regardless of the fact that such a maverick as Ron Paul is in this presidential race, shouldn't the media be calling attention to the obvious inadequacies of current polling methods in this era of modern communications? Maybe this is the first election season in which the popularity of cell phones vs. landlines has had a really major effect, but that doesn't give the media an excuse to dismiss text polls and internet polls while placing full faith in landline polls. I'm guessing they won't call attention to the issue as long as they are happy with the candidates that these polls are favoring. A strong showing for Ron Paul in the primaries will surely bring up the issue. Otherwise, it might not come up for another 4 years.
I'm not making an argument for or against cell phones, I'm just summarizing what I've read, so please don't shoot the messenger. Or go to http://Pollster.com to delve into this more deeply.
It is not conclusive what effect lack of cell phone polling does. More likely it has great affect on some questions, some affect on some other questions, and no affect on the rest. Which questions are affected how much is not known. There is some research in this area, but it is only starting. Cell phone polling costs considerably more at present, so many people paying for this (or reporting on results) don't feel it is worthwhile.
Yes there are problems with polling methodology. But it's still the best measurement available. The mainstream media is only now starting to pay lip service to Ron Paul. Most people still don't know who he is. And because of the establishment opposition to him, many think he's some kind of fringe candidate or kook. We have big obstacles to overcome. It's better to face our challenges head on, than to bury our head in the sand and pretend they don't exist.
Dan,
This post sounds like a rant. Maybe you need to get away from the data for a day or two. Take a little vacation and regroup.
I know this is frustrating. I've been politically active since the Reagan years. But what is the alternative. If Ron Paul is not elected POTUS, what then? Will we just accept more war, more devaluation of our currency, more government intrusion into our lives? This is the good fight and we must keep in it come what may. Ron Paul's candidacy proves that we are strong and growing stronger.
THEWINCH: I've heard that polling companies sometimes use a "multiplier" which takes the number of people who respond a certain way and *multiplies* it by a coefficient they think "accurately" represents the real population. It sounds absurd, but it's not ENTIRELY circular and ridiculous: it's just their way of accounting for things like a candidate who is supported by more men (who are typically home less) or a candidate like Ron Paul (who attracts atypical support). Even if this is the case, I'd anticipate there to be a lag or underestimation of his support for all of the reasons that have been mentioned...
DAN: It's awesome that you keep tweaking the sight... I still like the poll numbers graph, though. Even if it IS a biased number, it has some worth. In scientific measurement, for those of you who haven't heard these terms, there is precision and then there is accuracy. Precision means you can hit a very narrow range each time (like a dart-thrower who can always hit the #10 right between the '0'). Accuracy is how close that shot is to the true value (like a dart thrower who aims at the bullseye). For perfect measurement youpneed to be both on target and a sharp shot. Thus, while Political polling numbers are surely not accurate they are certainly tracking something with precision. This means even though they are not 'right' they still give us a worthwhile number to track as it changes. Just like the #10 dart-thrower is always, say, 38 inches off to the left, the media is always, say, 5-8 points below Paul's real numbers. I don't think keeping track of them discourages Paul supporters--who know better--and I think it is the most important metric which the media is using right now to keep an eye on the election...we should use it too.
sorry.. 'site'
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