McCain???
He's nothing but a Democrat guised as a "moderate" Republican.
The guy reminds me very much of John Kerry.
McCain???
He's nothing but a Democrat guised as a "moderate" Republican.
The guy reminds me very much of John Kerry.
Yep, they are the only snakes on the planet with armpits. In case anyone has ever wondered where the A-hole of the USA is located, here is the address:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
umbrella39
Lifer
- Jun 11, 2004
- 13,819
- 1,126
- 126
Bowfinger
Lifer
- Nov 17, 2002
- 15,776
- 392
- 126
I agree. The problem isn't Republicans per se. The ideal situation, in my opinion, is a balance of both Democrats and Republicans (ideally with a healthy mix of independents and third-party candidates, but that's another topic). The real problem is the neocons and religious extremists who have hijacked the Republican party and perverted it into a cruel parody of conservative values. America needs the Republican rank and file to take the party back from the Bush faithful.
ProfJohn
Lifer
- Jul 28, 2006
- 18,251
- 8
- 0
I don't see proof of anything Craig. Where is there evidence of vote theft? The fact that the polls were wrong is suppose to be evidence that someone is stealing votes?
You guys amaze me. When the right talks about making voters show picture IDs the left jumps up and down and runs out the claim that there has only been one proven case of voter fraud in X number of years.
But when election results are not what the left wants they again jump up and down and scream that someone is stealing votes.
Please explain to me how we are stealing 3 or 4% of the vote nation wide and not being caught at it? How are we stealing any significant number and not being caught? Sooner or later someone involved in this whole vote stealing scheme would end up spilling the beans. Even people in Washington feel guilty afterwards, look at the Foley and Reid scandals. In both cases people from their own party have been saying things about the scandal that hurt their side. In Foley we have the Republican aid who talked about going to Hastert and in Reid the whole thing started because of an aid being upset "AP first learned of the transaction from a former Reid aide who expressed concern the deal hadn't been properly reported."
I am 100% sure that if there was enough vote stealing going around as to actually make a difference sooner or later someone would fess up to it.
Once again if I am wrong, show me proof of vote stealing, and a poll that is wrong does not constitute proof.
ProfJohn
Lifer
- Jul 28, 2006
- 18,251
- 8
- 0
Since once again polling data has become the center piece of a thread I thought I would again show evidence that the polls tend to skew towards Democrats.
From Pollingreport.com
2004 Presidential election results
Bush 51% Kerry 48%
Here are the "Pollster Vote Projections" i.e. their best guess as to who would end up with what.
Bush first Kerry second
Zogby 49.4 - 49.1
Battle ground: Tarrance(R) 51.2 - 47.8
Battle ground: Lake(D) 48.6 - 50.7
TIPP 50.1 - 48
Harris 49 - 48
Democracy Corps(D) 48.7 - 49.5
Gallup 49 - 49
Pew 51 - 48
So out of 8 polls: 3 were close to the real outcome. 2 picked the right winner, but had the numbers wrong. And 3 either had a tie of went for Kerry.
Notice that the two polls with the D next to them were run by Democrats and both predicted that Kerry would win... interesting huh?
Even more damning, of the 8 polls only 2 put Bush's total higher than the 50.75% that he actually got, while the other 6 put Bush's number lower than actual result. While on the other side 4 of them over stated Kerry's total. Only 1 under stated Kerry's actual vote.
So we have 2 polls that leaned towards Bush (Tarrance, Pew) 1 poll that was almost dead on (TIPP) and the other 5 leaned towards Kerry by 2% or more, one was 3% wrong and one was 4.5% wrong (which happens to be out of that polls MoE. That one was also run by a Democrat hmmmm)
You can talk about margin of error all you want, but when over half the polls create an error in one direction and only 2 go the other way there are definite problems with how they determine outcome and who really is a 'likely' voter.
The numbers are not as easy to run on Congressional preference because they don't have the nice "Final Tally" section of that.
Congress numbers
Actual results
Republicans 55 million Dems 52 million or
R 49% D 46.5% = R+2.5%
All of these are from late October of that year.
Once again Republican first Democrat second
George Washington U. 47 ? 44 = R+3
CNN/USA Today/ Gallup 47- 48 = D+1
NBC/Wall Street Journal 43 ? 44 = D+1
Newsweek 49 ? 44 =R+5
Democracy Corps (D) 45 ? 48 =D+3
AP 46- 47 = D+1
CBS/NY Times 39 ? 45 =D+6
7 polls. One of them (Newsweek) was semi close, had the R number right and the D number low. One of them (GW) had the winner right, with lower numbers for both sides. FIVE of them predicted that the Democrats would take a majority of votes for congress. 5 out of 7 were WRONG by more than 3% (MoE in all of there is around 3%)
Notice that NONE of these polls over stated the Republican number, but 3 of them over stated the Democrat number, which is HUGE because all of them have over 3% undecided or not sure. CNN and Democracy Corps had 5% not sure and still over stated the Dem vote by 2%. That means that every undecided and 2% of the people who said they would vote Democrat actually voted Republican.
CBS-NY Times gave Democrats a 6% point edge, a 9% point error from the actual vote. (and you wonder why we bitch about them the most?)
Of course no one would ever accuse them of being biased right?
Now please throw out your ?vote stealing? argument. Since 1% of the vote is nearly a million votes I would love to hear how Republicans stole over 2 millions votes without anyone getting caught.
What does this mean for this year? Well since most tracking polls show about a 10 point edge for the Democrats when we subtract the 4 point average error from 2004 we end up with a 6 point Democrat edge, which is going to hurt like hell on election day.
Ps. what a long ass post
From Pollingreport.com
2004 Presidential election results
Bush 51% Kerry 48%
Here are the "Pollster Vote Projections" i.e. their best guess as to who would end up with what.
Bush first Kerry second
Zogby 49.4 - 49.1
Battle ground: Tarrance(R) 51.2 - 47.8
Battle ground: Lake(D) 48.6 - 50.7
TIPP 50.1 - 48
Harris 49 - 48
Democracy Corps(D) 48.7 - 49.5
Gallup 49 - 49
Pew 51 - 48
So out of 8 polls: 3 were close to the real outcome. 2 picked the right winner, but had the numbers wrong. And 3 either had a tie of went for Kerry.
Notice that the two polls with the D next to them were run by Democrats and both predicted that Kerry would win... interesting huh?
Even more damning, of the 8 polls only 2 put Bush's total higher than the 50.75% that he actually got, while the other 6 put Bush's number lower than actual result. While on the other side 4 of them over stated Kerry's total. Only 1 under stated Kerry's actual vote.
So we have 2 polls that leaned towards Bush (Tarrance, Pew) 1 poll that was almost dead on (TIPP) and the other 5 leaned towards Kerry by 2% or more, one was 3% wrong and one was 4.5% wrong (which happens to be out of that polls MoE. That one was also run by a Democrat hmmmm)
You can talk about margin of error all you want, but when over half the polls create an error in one direction and only 2 go the other way there are definite problems with how they determine outcome and who really is a 'likely' voter.
The numbers are not as easy to run on Congressional preference because they don't have the nice "Final Tally" section of that.
Congress numbers
Actual results
Republicans 55 million Dems 52 million or
R 49% D 46.5% = R+2.5%
All of these are from late October of that year.
Once again Republican first Democrat second
George Washington U. 47 ? 44 = R+3
CNN/USA Today/ Gallup 47- 48 = D+1
NBC/Wall Street Journal 43 ? 44 = D+1
Newsweek 49 ? 44 =R+5
Democracy Corps (D) 45 ? 48 =D+3
AP 46- 47 = D+1
CBS/NY Times 39 ? 45 =D+6
7 polls. One of them (Newsweek) was semi close, had the R number right and the D number low. One of them (GW) had the winner right, with lower numbers for both sides. FIVE of them predicted that the Democrats would take a majority of votes for congress. 5 out of 7 were WRONG by more than 3% (MoE in all of there is around 3%)
Notice that NONE of these polls over stated the Republican number, but 3 of them over stated the Democrat number, which is HUGE because all of them have over 3% undecided or not sure. CNN and Democracy Corps had 5% not sure and still over stated the Dem vote by 2%. That means that every undecided and 2% of the people who said they would vote Democrat actually voted Republican.
CBS-NY Times gave Democrats a 6% point edge, a 9% point error from the actual vote. (and you wonder why we bitch about them the most?)
Of course no one would ever accuse them of being biased right?
Now please throw out your ?vote stealing? argument. Since 1% of the vote is nearly a million votes I would love to hear how Republicans stole over 2 millions votes without anyone getting caught.
What does this mean for this year? Well since most tracking polls show about a 10 point edge for the Democrats when we subtract the 4 point average error from 2004 we end up with a 6 point Democrat edge, which is going to hurt like hell on election day.
Ps. what a long ass post
ProfJohn
Lifer
- Jul 28, 2006
- 18,251
- 8
- 0
"Who were you before you were banned"
Once again someone on the left trying to shut up someone they don't agree with.
Glad I am not on a stage or I am sure you and your friends rush up on it with a sign reading "The right steals votes" or some other nonsense.
I am listening, now show me some proof of vote stealing.
And while you are at it, show me some proof that I was once banned.
CaptnKirk
Lifer
- Jul 25, 2002
- 10,053
- 0
- 71
Yeah 'someone on the left' which places me smack dab in the middle of the Moderate Conservatives
when compared with the radical extreme fruitcakes that have STOLE MY PARTY.
Just wait - we'll someday get back the wreck that they made of it, maybe there will be enough remaining to fix
but I fully expect the the whole country will kick it to the curb, trash that it will have become from your ilk.
WWYBYWB = It's along the lines of Who Would Jesus Waterboard and Torture
Only you would know, but if you slip up everyone will find out.
I don't have to PROVE anything to you, this is an Interned Forum, not a court of law.
So then - prove you weren't.
Hmm, interesting, but not particularly valid. First of all, EVERYONE admits that partisan polls are biased, they typically do not use a good scientific method and are NOT the focus of most serious discussions about polling. In any case, you included 2 biased polls from Dems and only one biased poll from Republicans, NOT a fair analysis if you ask me.
So let's throw out the partisan polls and look at what's left, which is the real meat of the argument. If your goal is to prove that partisan polls are biased, I'll grant that right now. What the debate is about is polls that claim to be non-partisan. What's left here is 5 polls that are not affiliated with either party. By my count, 4 of them predicted the correct winner and one of them predicted a tie. As for how each candidate did, 3 predicted Kerry's results, while 1 predicted Bush's results. Two polls were off on Kerry by +1%, while 3 were off on Bush by -2% and one was off by -1%.
Clearly biased for Kerry, right, assuming of course you decide to totally discount the margin of error (which you seem to think you can do for some reason, clearly you are not a professor of statistics). But you're discounting the effect of 3rd party voters, which 4 of the 5 polls overestimated. In fact, the inaccuracy of this estimate accounts for virtually all of the "error" in the polls, the results for Bush and Kerry are ONLY comparable to the real results if you assume that people who polled as 3rd party but voted Democrat or Republican went evenly to Bush and Kerry. The polls do NOT measure the chances of this happening, or make any promises to that effect, which is (one of the reasons) why there is a margin of error and why judging the poll by discounting the margin of error is scientifically flawed.
But what about my point about averaging polls? That is the emerging scientific way to do things, and smooths out small errors in any particular poll. It also produces highly accurate results (as the sites I talked about in my previous post indicate). A naive average done on the 5 non-partisan polls above gives the following outcome, Bush: 49.7% - Kerry: 48.42% - 3rd party or undecided: 1.88%. The winner is predicted correctly and Kerry's result is off by +0.42%, while Bush's result is off by -1.3%...well within any reasonable margin of error. But let's take it one step farther and look at just Bush vs Kerry (after all, no one is complaining about 3rd parties, your beef is that the polls are "clearly" biased towards Kerry). The real result was that, among people who voted for either Bush or Kerry, the results were Bush: 51.5% - Kerry: 48.5%. My average has a result of Bush: 50.7% - Kerry: 49.3%. That result is off by even less than 1%, Kerry +0.8% and Bush -0.8%. Not only is that damn close, and based on a naive average, but it makes assumptions about the polling data that are NOT true and not suggested by the polls.
Polls are highly accurate if you know what the hell you are doing, the issue is that most people do NOT know what they are doing. It's somewhat like flying a fighter jet, it's an excellent machine for WHAT IT'S DESIGNED FOR, but it's not going to do very well with some Joe Sixpack sitting in the cockpit pressing buttons at random. Polls are excellent FOR WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, the "problem" with them largely seems to come from people not knowing what the hell they are talking about or looking at.
umbrella39
Lifer
- Jun 11, 2004
- 13,819
- 1,126
- 126
New ISP aside, give it a rest, really. Just ignore the posts when people call you out, you look foolish when you try and proclaim you did not previously post here under another name. Sheeesh.
I believe you made the accusation. That places the burden of proof squarely in your corner.
Prof is absolutely right. Lefties here love to try and curtail any opinion (and those who express it) that doesn't sit well with them.
ProfJohn
Lifer
- Jul 28, 2006
- 18,251
- 8
- 0
Rain,
1. As far as the R v D polls, I didn't pick them, I just took the data right from the link.
2. You are trying to discount the two Democrat polls as being biased since we all expect them to be biased, that is a weak argument, why put the time and effort into a poll if you are only going to skew the results to fit what you want. I am sure the people who created those polls thought they were creating fair and accurate polls.
3. Throwing away the D and R polls and we are left with 5 polls. 4 of which were correct, very nice.
However, when you look at the predicted results and compare to the polls you still see some skew. If we throw out the 'not sures" the polls should still show a 3% victory for Bush, if the 'not sures' divide down the middle.
But we don't see that, what we see among the remaining polls were predicted victories for Bush of less than 1%, 2%, 1%, tie, 3%.
Also, we still see that all 5 of them guessed that Kerry would get 48% of the vote, even though 3-5% of the people had not yet made up there mind.
Additionally, only 2 predicted Bush getting over 50%, the other 3 pegged him at around 49%, 2 points lower than reality.
Like I said about MoE. If the polls showed a tendency to be both high for Bush AND Kerry then we can say that there are MoE problems. But when EVERY poll leans in one direction it brings in questions of methodology.
I stick to my previous statement, the polls tend to skew towards Democrats by 3-4 points.
1. As far as the R v D polls, I didn't pick them, I just took the data right from the link.
2. You are trying to discount the two Democrat polls as being biased since we all expect them to be biased, that is a weak argument, why put the time and effort into a poll if you are only going to skew the results to fit what you want. I am sure the people who created those polls thought they were creating fair and accurate polls.
3. Throwing away the D and R polls and we are left with 5 polls. 4 of which were correct, very nice.
However, when you look at the predicted results and compare to the polls you still see some skew. If we throw out the 'not sures" the polls should still show a 3% victory for Bush, if the 'not sures' divide down the middle.
But we don't see that, what we see among the remaining polls were predicted victories for Bush of less than 1%, 2%, 1%, tie, 3%.
Also, we still see that all 5 of them guessed that Kerry would get 48% of the vote, even though 3-5% of the people had not yet made up there mind.
Additionally, only 2 predicted Bush getting over 50%, the other 3 pegged him at around 49%, 2 points lower than reality.
Like I said about MoE. If the polls showed a tendency to be both high for Bush AND Kerry then we can say that there are MoE problems. But when EVERY poll leans in one direction it brings in questions of methodology.
I stick to my previous statement, the polls tend to skew towards Democrats by 3-4 points.
ProfJohn
Lifer
- Jul 28, 2006
- 18,251
- 8
- 0
Rain, the key to these polls is methodology in two key areas.
1. Determining who is a likely voter
2. Demographics.
Now Dick Morris, who is a polling genius (ask Bill Clinton about that) said that it appears that in 2004 pollsters over estimated the percentage of voters who would be female. Now since females tended to skew towards Kerry over stating their numbers by 1 or 2% would result in faulty polling data. Which is what we got.
I don't think these polls were rigged in anyway, I just think their methodology was wrong.
As I pointed out in my super-post, there were 17 total polls, and nearly ALL of them skewed towards the Democrats. That clearly shows an error of some type.
The fact that in the congressional preference polls 5 out of 7 were off by a margin GREATER than their MoE again shows faulty methodology.
As far as your ?Polls are highly accurate if you know what the hell you are doing? 5 out of 7 polls predicted that the Democrats were going to WIN congress. How accurate is that?
Enough about polls, my head is going to explode
"There are lies, damned lies and statistics."
Mark Twain
1. Determining who is a likely voter
2. Demographics.
Now Dick Morris, who is a polling genius (ask Bill Clinton about that) said that it appears that in 2004 pollsters over estimated the percentage of voters who would be female. Now since females tended to skew towards Kerry over stating their numbers by 1 or 2% would result in faulty polling data. Which is what we got.
I don't think these polls were rigged in anyway, I just think their methodology was wrong.
As I pointed out in my super-post, there were 17 total polls, and nearly ALL of them skewed towards the Democrats. That clearly shows an error of some type.
The fact that in the congressional preference polls 5 out of 7 were off by a margin GREATER than their MoE again shows faulty methodology.
As far as your ?Polls are highly accurate if you know what the hell you are doing? 5 out of 7 polls predicted that the Democrats were going to WIN congress. How accurate is that?
Enough about polls, my head is going to explode
"There are lies, damned lies and statistics."
Mark Twain
What difference does it make what they thought? Virtually no serious analysis of polling results takes into account partisan polls. You may feel that they should be included, and if you were conducting your own independent analysis, that would be fine. But your argument is that poll analysis suggesting Democratic victories are wrong, and that analysis almost exclusively uses NON-partisan polls...so you can hardly disprove their statements with partisan polls.
In any case, including an uneven distribution of biased polls will certainly skew the result, no matter how valid you think including such polls might be.
Of COURSE there is "skew", I never argued that there wasn't. What I argued was that counting the skew as significant is fundamentally flawed thinking. Your mistake with considering margin of error is that you seem to think that it's the margin of error for a random statistical distribution, that the results only make sense if they are randomly distributed within that margin. Like flipping a coin 100 times and counting heads and tails, you expect 50 of each with a margin of error a few to either side. But the margin of error in a poll is NOT representative of uncertainty in a mathematical distribution. The factors causing a shift one way or the other are not equal, simply unknown...THAT is where the uncertainty comes from.
Your point, if I understand correctly, is that it's suspicious that EVERY poll had a positive error on Kerry's side and negative error on Bush's side. But again, there are factors that polls simply can't account for (again, that's why there is a margin of error)...and those factors are NOT a random distribution, it's very likely that they favor one candidate or the other. Had your scenario played out, with each poll having a different random skew to either side, I'd say it's way more likely an error in methodology rather than a factor that was unaccounted for.
I'm also not sure where you get your "3-4" point skew from, the average result from the 5 neutral polls was 1.72% in favor of the Dems. However, I will grant that apparently the factor that wasn't accounted for skewed the polls 1.72% in favor of Kerry, so in that sense it was "skewed". But that statement assumes an accuracy the polls don't promise, you are simply reading the results wrong.
Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Rain, the key to these polls is methodology in two key areas.
1. Determining who is a likely voter
2. Demographics.
Now Dick Morris, who is a polling genius (ask Bill Clinton about that) said that it appears that in 2004 pollsters over estimated the percentage of voters who would be female. Now since females tended to skew towards Kerry over stating their numbers by 1 or 2% would result in faulty polling data. Which is what we got.
I don't think these polls were rigged in anyway, I just think their methodology was wrong.
As I pointed out in my super-post, there were 17 total polls, and nearly ALL of them skewed towards the Democrats. That clearly shows an error of some type.
The fact that in the congressional preference polls 5 out of 7 were off by a margin GREATER than their MoE again shows faulty methodology.
As far as your ?Polls are highly accurate if you know what the hell you are doing? 5 out of 7 polls predicted that the Democrats were going to WIN congress. How accurate is that?
Enough about polls, my head is going to explode
"There are lies, damned lies and statistics."
Mark Twain
No it doesn't. The methodology is perfect given the level of confidence they were looking for. Your complaint is, essentially, that a Honda Civic is not a Formula-1 car. Which, while true, was never a promise made by the folks at Honda.
As for the Congressional polls, you're applying the margin of error wrong. It would take a fair amount of statistics to explain it (and I'm not sure I understand the concept all that well myself), but it's wrong to put results in terms of totally right or totally wrong in relation to the real results and the margin of error. As I said, it's very much about what you think polls mean. If you think they represent iron-clad absolute results of what it going to happen, you'll be disappointed.
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