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Sunday, September 19, 2004

Skewed Polls
Posted by Jill | 4:28 PM
There's a wonderful woman I know; an indefategable fountain of political energy. I'll call her "L", though she is familiar to readers of letters to the editor of most of the major papers in the U.S.

She has done exhaustive research into, and has begun a letter-writing campaign, about how skewed all those polls showing George W. Bush with these huge leads are.

If you're going to sample a disproportionate number of Republicans, you're going to get a result skewed towards Bush. And that's what's happening. I can only assume that this is deliberate, designed to make Democratic voters stay home on November 2nd, as opposed to more ideological Republican voters, who always turn out come hell or high water.

Don't give them the satisfaction, and don't believe the polls. "L" sent the following letter to Bob Schieffer of CBS' Face the Nation today:

CBS News skewed its presidential poll
Dear Bob Schieffer,

There is an additional point about your program this morning that is offensive to me and should be offensive to any fair-minded person, and it was your characterization of the CBS presidential poll results without any relevant mention of the poll's methodology.

You were touting the results of the latest CBS poll and claiming the poll indicates Mr. Bush has a nine-point lead over Mr. Kerry, but you neglected to mention the way in which this poll was skewed to arrive at that result. I would remind you, again, that you are NOT a member of the polling organization or a member of the Bush campaign team and have NO journalistic obligation to defend or assist either entity when it does unethical things, as this particular poll has done.

There is one very important and overlooked statistic in The New York Times/CBS poll showing Bush with a lead.

Deep down in the methodology and questions asked was "who" the person voted for in 2000, Gore or Bush. Now this is very important because Al Gore beat Bush by ONE HALF MILLION votes, so therefore the people being questioned should have reflected that outcome (not the outcome provided by one vote at the US Sup. Ct.), and at the very least an EQUAL number of Gore and Bush supporters should have been polled. But that is NOT what happened; they polled 28 percent who had voted for Gore and 36 percent who had voted for Bush.

So Bush had an ADVANTAGE in this poll before the first numbers were even tallied. OF COURSE Bush would win in a poll where there was a higher percentage of Bush supporters questioned than Gore supporters. If anything, they should have questioned more Gore supporters, but they didn't -- so the poll was SKEWED from the start to favor Bush.

If you want to see more about the poll, click here: http://nytimes.com/politics/ and then click on "How the Poll Was Conducted | Full Results" but click on just the words "Full Results"

Now this is the second poll where I have looked into the methodology and results and found it skewed toward Bush; the other one was the Newsweek poll following the Republican Convention; that poll also favored Bush by questioning FAR more Republicans than Democrats and FAR more people living in RED states than BLUE states; in addition to which, almost HALF of those polled were from military families who famously vote Republican.

In addition, the most recent Gallup poll also questioned more Republicans than Democrats:

...the Gallup Poll, despite its reputation, assumes that this November 40% of those turning out to vote will be Republicans, and only 33% will be Democrat. >>

Likely Voter Sample
Total Sample: .......767
GOP: .................. 305 ...(40%)
Dem: ................... 253 ...(33%)

And yet...


According to John Zogby himself:...
If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000..
So the Democrats have been 39% of the voting populace in both 1996 and 2000, and the GOP has NOT BEEN HIGHER THAN 35% in either of those elections. Yet Gallup trumpets a poll that used a sample that shows a GOP bias of 40% amongst likely voters and 38% amongst registered voters, with a Democratic portion of the sample down to levels they haven't been at since a strong three-way race in 1992?

Folks, unless Karl Rove can discourage the Democratic base into staying home in droves and gets the GOP to come out of the woodwork, there is NO WAY IN HELL that these or any other Gallup Poll is to be taken SERIOUSLY.>>
Read this at: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002806.html


It is becoming sadly apparent that at least some polling outfits (as well as much of the media) appear to be under Republican control.

Sincerely, but in the hope you will open your eyes to the facts,

"L"


I can't say I'm optimistic about November 2nd, because I believe the mechanism is in place for a thoroughly rigged election. The New York Times reports today that "nearly one-third of the more than 150 million registered voters in the United States will be asked to cast their ballots on machines whose accuracy and security against fraud have yet to be tested on such a grand scale." That's certainly enough to decide an election. The problem with these machines isn't malevolent hackers; it's employees of the voting machines, all of which are owned by Republican campaign contributors, installing so-called software patches on uncertified machines.

Do I believe in my heart that when faced with a mainstream media that has given, and continues to give, George W. Bush a free pass for the last three years, and is willing to report outright lies and slander against John Kerry as "the other side", as if Hitler's loathing for Jews had just been "another point of view"; a Republican-controlled voting apparatus, and an electoral college that in many states is under no obligation to rreflect the popular vote, that John Kerry has any chance at all? No. But I don't want to wake up November 3 and know that I didn't rage against the machine as long as I could.
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