Paul and the phone polls vs. the internet polls.

[nmnita]

Originally Posted by slackjaw

It is quite common for them to be spammed, there have been links posted in this forum to examples of threads in Ron Paul sites where they discuss and organize spamming polls with anonymous IPs.

What baffles me is how some people just cannot learn from past actual results that an internet straw poll is not an accurate measure, it happened same way four years ago with Paul supporters predicting landslide wins because they'd win any straw poll with 70% of the vote. Despite the ensuing reality in the voting booths this year again there was post after post celebrating his dominance in online polls and high fiving each other that the people have finally woken up.

I won't go so far as to say, they are spammed (could be) but they are very inaccuate and as phony as could be. Anyone that puts one bit of credence into an internet poll has their heads in the sand or somewhere else.

Nita

[CDusr]

As I said, the issue is the way the poll is setup. There would be evidence of funny business. Anonymous ips also don't mean much and are easily dealt with. (assuming such a plan was plotted) Overloading a poll, isn't what I would call "spam".

Personally, I have to question all the polls.

There's the spamming issue, but there's also the demographics issue.

Scientific polls will control for age, gender, etc, ensuring that the numbers they come up with are actually representative of the electorate. There's a reason polling organizations expend a lot of time and effort into coming up with reasonable likely voter models.

[michiganmoon]

Originally Posted by CDusr

As I said, the issue is the way the poll is setup. There would be evidence of funny business. Anonymous ips also don't mean much and are easily dealt with. (assuming such a plan was plotted) Overloading a poll, isn't what I would call "spam".

Personally, I have to question all the polls.

Yet you start threads about questioning phone polls but taking for granted internet polls.

[CDusr]

Originally Posted by michiganmoon

Yet you start threads about questioning phone polls but taking for granted internet polls.

I didn't start this thread. ??? Yes, I know we all look the same... LoL.

[banjomike]

Polling is always going to be controversial. No way around it, because people have emotional investments in their candidates, so they're naturally going to hate a poll that makes a candidate look bad.

Anyone can put a poll together, but there is actual science behind the professional polling organizations. The questions asked often reveal much more in their statistics to the pro's than to the common person who just reads them. It's all about parsing, and parsing is where the best pollsters home territory is.
It's their job to give a candidate bad news as much as good news- if a candidate is serious about winning, he needs to have both. If anything, the bad news is more important, because a candidate has to develop a plan to turn bad news around if he can, and that's where the parsing comes in.

The non-pro can slap a poll together that doesn't ask the right questions, or phrase them the right way, and get any result they want.

While all the professionals are busy right now with their Republican clients, the same outfits will be working for both parties in the general election. None of them are ever totally in the bag for one party or the other- to do so means neither will use them in the future, and their organization will go broke.

It's hard for voters to believe poll results, but the pro's careers depend on as much accuracy as they can create and deliver. What voters take away from their polls is not very important- the people they work for depend and need the good and bad news equally.

So if there is a very wide discrepancy between an online poll and a traditional poll, a voter needs to really think about who created the poll and take it from there.

As a general rule: If there's more than 20 points involved between two polls, one of them isn't worth a hoot, no matter how they were conducted.

[Huckleberry3911948]

i am ron paul all the way. i dont think he will win but a strong showing will make the other candidates think very hard about his policies.

[Natural510]

Sorry, but he hasn't placed above third so far in any state, and it's doubtful he will. The other Republican candidates are too egomaniacal and out of touch to even consider embracing Paul's policies.