Americans shifting to the right (Snowe and Collins not listening)
Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say their views are growing more conservative, according to a new Gallup poll:
Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven’t changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.
(Hat tip – Just Karl)
Are Republican senators paying attention? Apparently not.
Nutroots King Kos is gloating about the voting records of GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. According to CQ Politics roll call vote analysis of 2009 patterns:
Both Snowe and Collins voted 92 percent of the time with Obama and less than 50 percent of the time with their own party.
Who needs Al Franken with Republicans like these?
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Now, THAT has been true of me for decades….
Looking at the demographic breakdown of the R2000 poll, I didn’t see anything that would invalidate the results. It appeared to be a representative sample. I’m not 100% certain about the state to state composition, but they indicated that they conducted the poll state to state and 2400 respondents is a sufficient number for that type of poll. And I didn’t see anything odd in the text of the questions.
I would add what you can’t see is the quality of the phone number samples and the specific time period of the poll. Meaning time of day the call s were made. But they do state the dates, which were Monday through Thursday. Typically the best evenings to poll and get representative raw samples.
But in comparing to other polls, or some hypothetical golden standard, it seemed fine to me. Yeah, I’m suspect of the Kos/Soros influence. But I honestly can’t see how they could have influenced the research.
Thank you, NJ.
Chappy, like “For free”, I didn’t mention “Fox”. You did – scroll up and check. Even then I replied I’m not impressed by polls by anybody with an axe to grind. Think I pointed that out twice, at least. (Feel free to debate yourself on it, though, Chap.)
That’s all well and good as smokeblowing goes, but you missed two things. 1) I’m pointing out it’s important who is picking up the tab, not that it costs money to do polling and 2) to you didn’t address the specific question I posed, querying about your yay or nay on polling data paid for by “Big Tabacco”.
I’m assuming you don’t do actual litigation, but are more “desk-oriented” in the legal profession. I’m assuming that partly because most attorneys I know have dealt with hostile expert witnesses. The attorneys very obviously realize the witness is (just as obviously) paid to give expert testimony designed to undermine their case. I’ve never known a lawyer to be overwhelmed by the hostile expert witnesses creds. If the attys were very terribly inexperienced and didn’t know about the expert witnesses-”follow the money” rule, they would quite easily be chewed up and spit out in record time by their adversary.
You do know the difference between a legitimate poll paid for by an interested entity and a so called “push poll”, right? Believe me, for every poll big tobacco puts out there with the question “Do you believe people should have the right to smoke or do you favor government regulation of your activities” they also commission legitimate ones because they need more than propaganda to run their business; they need actual data too.
With that in mind, why don’t you ACTUALLY LOOK AT THE POLL IN QUESTION rather than hemming and hawing and beating around the bush about the source of its funding and tell me if you have any specific issues with it. Or better yet, just read post 95, from someone that clearly knows more than either of us.
And the problem with your expert witness analogy is that the other side actually has to show some evidence that the expert witness’s conclusions are wrong. They can’t just rely on the whole “They are biased! They have been paid!” canard that you are using to dismiss commissioned polls.
No, you didn’t say “for free.” You just dismissed every entity that would actually pay. What does that leave? But you are right about Fox news, it was a misreading of your post. I apologize.
Don’t blame Minnesota for Frankenfraud.
Coleman almost certainly beat him among legal, registered voters, and almost all the 3rd party people were casting protest votes against Coleman, but would never have voted for Franken.
They did, however, make Coleman’s victory close enough that mysteriously discovered ballots and other Demonratic Party shenanigans allowed Franken to steal it.
Yes. East, west, and north are directions. The South is a place.
Maybe some of the youth vote that went crazy in favor of Obama are starting to realize their parents and grandparents were right.
You missed the point of the “expert witness” analogy entirely, Chappy. It was to point out that the attorneys themselves know the score. They are not overwhelmed since they realize the guy is just getting paid to say what the opposition wants him to say, they know it’s testimony bought to boost the other side’s case. Where I was incorrect, legally, was in using the term “hostile” without noting I was employing the word as used colloquially, where the witness is presumed to be generally hostile to the attorney’s case. (Although I’ve seen expert witnesses declared adverse witnesses.)
So I was stressing the “Com’n, use your God-given common sense” factor in transferring that ability to know the score. I imagine you have a notary license, as do I. If you or I, in that capacity, were to notarize an instrument in which we had financial or beneficial interest, the document would be void. “Follow the money” is the trump card.
I don’t believe I wrote any entity that pays or at least that’s not my criteria. I think I tried to single out anybody with an “axe to grind” (yeah, that’s verbatum).
So you accept the conclusions of the “Big Tabacco” polls that you feel are “legitimate” then, Chap? And if the same company were paid to come up both the polls you disagree with & those you disagree with, then wouldn’t the polling company have impeached it’s own credibility?
Would you agree or disagree with this observation:
“You have to ask yourself the question, ‘Why did the tobacco company want to support her research?’” Dr. Jerome Kassirer says.”
From this USA blogarticle -
Cigarette company paid for lung-cancer study
The simple fact that Kos is paying for the poll is enough to invalidate it in my opinion. Rasmussen’s consistently high disapprove numbers are also curious. The problem is that unlike the job approval poll, there are only a few favorable pollsters.
I’m surprised there is enough Obama/Republican overlap to make those two percentages both true.
On July 6th, 2009 at 7:33 pm, John Deaux said:
Rasmussen’s consistently high disapprove numbers are also curious.
purplepeep,
I will try to address your questions after you look at the crosstabs of the Research 2000 poll and tell me specifically what issues you have with it.
Until then, you are just bloviating.
As an “update” – I see some Krazy Kos-kid “diarist” finally did cite this Gallup poll in a rant against Brent Bozell.
The denial/rationialization in the comments goes from desperate “it was a bad question” to extra snort-worthy “Yeah, but it’s only cuz we’re the conservatives now!”.
Though a few displayed some rare real-world common sense in noting this is worrisome. (If we saw polls coming out showing a shift to the left, I’d be concerned, in turn.)
And I got your point about the expert witness. Whether or not an attorney “knows the score” with respect to expert witness testimony, they still have to make their case as to why the expert testimony is wrong on its face. Which is why I am asking you to actually look at the poll.
Sorry, Chappy, but that’s not how it goes in back & forth commentary. There’s no “I’ll stomp my feet unless you” quid pro quo.
The questions I asked understandably upset you – you just honestly cannot answer them without contradicting yourself. Not because they are gotcha-trick questions, but because they forced you to have to re-think your position. They are, for you, very difficult questions.
Although it seems very likely you are not experienced in actual litigation, the real court nitty-gritty, you are bright enough not to “impeach” yourself. Your everyday witness in the stand very usually is much more susceptible and is more likely to walk himself into self-impeachment and , sometimes, even into perjury.
If you want to duck the questions, that’s really fine and it’s no biggee, Chappy. But I don’t engage in “Let’s Make A Deal” shows to enable someone’s avoidance, sorry.
Who, in you opinion does commission polls without an axe to grind. Obviously you have eliminated any media outlet, and apparently any private industry.
So basically you have shown you DON’T know the difference between a push poll and a legitimate one that a company would commission for internal use. Would I accept an ad from the tobacco company that said 7 of 10 people don’t want a ban on smoking in public? Not without looking at it. I would not be surprised o find it is a push poll. Would I trust a poll that the same company commissioned for their own internal purposes? Again, not without looking at it, but in this case I would be surprised to find it was a push poll because any business wants to act with correct information.
But you know what the common thread is here?
LOOKING AT THE ACTUAL POLL!!!
I have answered your questions. Now tell me why specifically the Research 2000 poll is spurious. Which questions were worded poorly? Were their demographics skewed?
Nope, Chappy, I have to make no case. Again, I’m only pointing out there that you seem to be unable to transfer a particular skill set. And I don’t believe acknowledging the obvious “X is paying Y to come up with something good for X” is a tres difficult logical skill set to transfer.
Fixed that for you. If the bias is so glaringly obvious in their polling it should be easy for a sharp little cookie like you to point it out.
I WOULD invite you to go to Pollster, look at the favorable/unfavorable poll, take note of the overall shape of the trendlines, then filter out all the polls except Research 2000, look at the shape of their trend lines and then ponder why the lines look so much alike if they are fabricating their data.
Like I said, I WOULD invite you to do this, but this would require dabbling in evidence and fact rather than speculation and rank assumption.
You have to look at trends. I follow the Rasmussen and Gallup tracking polls since they’re published regularly and you can see trends then worry about sample accuracy later.
But this one is interesting too….
CNN/ORC (favorable/unfavorable)
4/3 to 4/5 — 66/30
4/23 to 4/26 — 63/33
5/14 to 5/17 — 62/35
6/26 to 6/28 — 61/37
And this was before the June unemployment numbers came out. AND it’s all adults, instead of registered or likely voters, which tend to show lower numbers for the Dems. AND it’s a CNN poll, which…well you know.
If that next CNN poll shows a number below 60%, that’s really, really bad for Obummer.
Professional polling is done as a living and not married to any one entity. e.g. Gallup does “generic” polling all the time. It’s what they do, there are thousands of users of the information who pick up the tab.
Sometimes they’ll do one in conjunction with a news organization, like Fox. In that case you should consider it “tainted” as you should does one with MSNBC. Maybe interesting, but slanted.
When it’s an off-brand company coming up with confessed “high” numbers, that’s not a good sign. When it’s an off-brand company coming up with confessed “high” numbers that’s pretty much the house-polling for a PAC, then buzzers should be sounding and red lights flashing. And make no mistake, Kos is a PAC – I hope you should know that.
(I’d avoid using a “house poll” altogether – aside from the sharing of the same bed, there’s the “danger of the celeb” in believing one’s own PR)
Not really, you blew a lotta smoke again, but didn’t give a “yes” or “no” on whether you trust (or distrust) “Big Tabacco” data. You don’t have to explain why or why not – just a yay or nay is fine, simple thumbs up or down, that’s all I expect. It should be more than enough.
Super! Your buzzers are sounding and your lights are flashing! Now follow the hell through and confirm your suspicion by critiquing the actual poll! If you hear your smoke alarm go off, do you ever think it might be a good idea to peek your head in the kitchen to check for an actual fire or do you just run screaming from your house?
Yes I did answer it. And you are avoiding the essential issue, which is the Research 2000 poll. How much more of my time are you going to waste avoiding it?
Not surprising about Snowe and Collins. Why exactly are they Republicans again? And why exactly should the GOP follow their lead? To become a carbon-copy of the Democrats so we have a de facto one-party rule? No thanks. They might as well do the ol’ Specter Shuffle and be honest about it.
About the trend rightward, it’s nice to see, but when even Colin Powell knows you’re screwing up, the ideological leanings might not matter when the idiocy becomes blatantly obvious.
Sorry, Chap, but I missed where you said “Yes, I trust “Big Tobacco” or “No, I don’t trust “Big Tobacco”.
We’ll have to sum up and agree to disgree, at best.
Now lessee here -
Unless you go through the data, checking to see if it rained on Tuesday in Biafra vs. how many angels can dance on the head of a pin on a sunny Sunday, you are at a total loss to:
Figure out if a PAC-paid poll will come up with data showing the paying PAC’s stances/perceptions to be favored (or hated) by the public.
Be aware if data paid for by “Big Tobacco” will reflect positively or negatively on smoking.
Now, where we differ is that I just have no like problems in figuring such things out. Don’t even need to scratch the noggin for a sec. So you can set down the Powerpoints, graphs, charts and boxes of files & just rest yourself a spell.
I’m not picking on “Big Tobacco”, by the way. But the higher Obama-priced cigars don’t make me too happy. I just know that if you prefix “Big” in front of whatever capitalist demon, those of a liberal bent are happy. And it makes it more “we’re on the same page, bro” conversation-enabling.
I confess to being embarrassed at having spelled “tobacco” wrong more than once here today, though.
Translation: I will ignore facts, not bother to back up my assertion and simply stick to my banal, unsubstantiated opinion.
That, my friends, is the sound of purplepeep losing the argument. Or being too lazy to follow through with it. Or he did look at the poll and was unable to come up with any intelligent criticism. Take your pick.
It would’ve been much more interesting if you were able to answer my questions in lieu of trying to “play to the board” for sympathy/help, Chappy.
But I coulda been more succinct in my last comment, Chap, and just noted that Bobby Zimmerman was wrong; some people do need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.(Cryptic, you betcha.)
Cop out? You betcha. Dude I answered your stupid question. I said I would not necessarily trust, but that does not mean the polling is wrong or skewed and that the only way to actually KNOW (rather than just speculate) is to look at the poll.
You have no excuses for not answering my question. What specific issues do you have with the way the poll was administered? It should be a breeze to point out if the bias is so evident. Spend 30 seconds doing that rather than 10 minutes posting silly reasons for why you won’t.
I have to tell you, Chap, I’ve been online for many a year – even before Gore invented the internet. There were these things called BBS. Even then when people started losing it they began to “play to the board”, as it was sometimes called. And if memory serves, “Dude” was popular in some early 90s BBs back&forth. But I slip into Minnesota-talk often (it resembles Palin-speak) so I won’t pick on the Dudey-stuff much. Just saying some things aren’t new.
Indeed. I emphasized your inability to come to what I would consider common sense conclusions in my comment. e.g. PACS are going to come up with stuff that they can tout and that smoking cigs is bad for one’s health.
I pointed out those are things I just don’t need to summon up the ghost of Einstein to figure out. And, though it may upset you, I’d hazard a guess most people would not need a poll as the “only way to actually KNOW” those answers anymore than they need a poll as the “only way to actually KNOW” if they should let their kids play in the trafiic.
And I’ve told you more than once why I’d dismiss any poll touted by any PAC that’s writing the pollster’s checks. It’s just common sense not to be impressed.
I suppose I could humor you with a “WOW! Look at that surge in Obama’s popularity that the Kos poll came up with!!” if it’s really all that important to you. That’s if you truly need to be humored or feel a need for validation of your opinion. I hope you do not.
Conversely, you could say “Well, IMHO, I think it’s an amazing poll!” to my IMHO of “Eh…politics as usual at work.”
As I said, IMHOs are just no biggee to me. Like armpits, everyone has at least one.
What’s somewhat odd, to me,though is this reasoning:
(By the way, that doesn’t qualify as “Yes, I trust Big Tobacco” or “No, I don’t trust Big Tobacco.” Some nice evasive fence-setting, tho.)
If you have an admittedly untrustworthy entity – and one with an agenda, no less – to start with, I’d say it’s not wise to continue trusting what it tosses out. You should know that as a basic legal principle, i.e. if someone’s testimony is untrustworthy at point A, you don’t suddenly trust them at point B.
Looking again at the demographics, I thought the voter affiliation might be a little off. But I compared this R2000 poll party breakdown with a Pew Research poll of party affiliation from 2008.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans
Pew has party as:
Dem 36%
Repub 27%
Ind 36%
These foot to 99%. There’s no Non-voters or Other.
So it’s possible “Other” is included in Ind for the Pew poll. If that’s so, and you take out the Non-Voters from the R2000 poll, the R2000 poll’s respondent’s party affiliation is actually pretty close to the Pew Research poll from 2008. A point low on R’s and a point high on Dems. But reasonably close.
The only other issue, and I think someone raised it in the comments, was the inclusion of “non-voters” as they put it. Essentially, making this a poll of adults. As opposed to Reg voters or Likely voters. But this is an approval poll, so it’s probably reasonable to include all adults in the results.
But the non-voters tend to lean left. And they may account for a bit more optimistic opinions of the Dems and not so optimistic opinion of the Republicans in the poll.
So maybe inclusion of all adults tilts it a little left as compared to a likely voter poll, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it evil, biased propaganda. They aren’t hiding the demos. And I’m someone who pretty much despises Kos.
purplepeep, you are now simply being disingenuous. I have nothing more to say to you except you should thank NJ Aviator for doing the thinking you are apparently incapable of doing. Too bad his conclusions shoot your sorry arguments out of the water. Or do you think he is lying?
“But the non-voters tend to lean left”? If only we could get more of the Left to be non-voters….
Americans shifting Right does not inspire, not a lot. Do these people KNOW why they are shifting Right? Are they merely upset with the Left’s furious spending and power grab? How many of these Americans Shifting Right know our history, Constitution, Declaration Of Independence and what it means?
While we of the Right battle well for the House, Senate and Whitehouse all too often we have ignored the schoolboard elections, town and county offices and such where so much of the world view is developed. To win this battle for the very soul of this Nation we have to fight the Good Fight everywhere.
I still worry about some “Man Made Disaster” in 2010 or 12 allowing the Dems to seize more power should they think they were losing at the polls. Never waste a good crisis as Rahmn Emmanuel said.
Fine. Couple more things…
Ghost of Einstein? Please. Lets start out with the ghost of being able to follow a freaking link and look at some simple numbers and then work our way up to Einstein’s ghost.
When the hell did I say that Obama’s popularity was surging under the Kos poll? I in fact said the opposite, when I pointed out that Kos’s trendline mirrors the aggregate trend line i.e., his favorability has been waning over the past few months. But maybe that would have required you to pull your head out of your a$$ and actually do some research.
Uhhh…do you not know what the word “trust” means? If I trusted a tobacco company, I would not feel the need to check the underlying data. So perhaps the reason your question was worded so stupidly, or that you were unable to comprehend my simple answer is that you have a poor grasp of English. Sorry, this is hardly the “gotcha” question you have built it up to be in your mind.
All of this boils down to one thing: You cannot or will not back up your banal assertion, and are now jumping through hoops to explain why you shouldn’t have to. Again, if the bias is so evident in a poll like this, someone with as much good sense and acumen as you claim should be able to tear it apart in no time. Your refusal to do so says more about you than I ever could.
It will be a fight for the local elections. Since starting the dumbing down of students in the public school system almost 50 years ago by the leftists, we have big handicap to overcome. Just observe the number of voters who go to the poles because the gov’t is going to give them something for “free”.
Not far enough. Once those like Snowe & Collins are unemployed, we’ll have sufficiently shifted enough.
PurplePeep.
I don’t see any real surge in the Kos poll. In NYC, his job approval is higher than the national average. That’s pretty common throughout much of the Northeast. I would expect the same of Michigan and the surrounding area. And of course, California.
But as a national poll, these are pretty much in line with most others, given that this poll is of adults rather than Voters. That means about a 6th of it’s respondents are leaning significantly left and in polls of voters, that group is not included. Which easily explains the 5 point difference from the Real Clear average of his Job Approval (58.7%) and the favorable rating Obama gets in this poll (63%). And on RCP, all of the “Adult” polls report a higher approval rating than any that are only registered voters or likely voters.
I know favorable and job approval are not exactly the same, but they can be considered comparable.
So I don’t really see any kind of surge here on a national basis. And as for the regional populations. They do not have a 2% statistical significance. Figure more like 5% for those sub-populations.
As for Kos… I agree that they will pick a poll that will give them what they want. Did they opt to use All Adults vs Likely Voters? Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
But again… this poll shows no surge for Obama. None. Given who they included in the results, it’s exactly what I would expect.
And I wouldn’t trust the Kossacks as far as I could throw them either, but there’s nothing that I can find that says this poll was massaged in a way that would invalidate it technically. But they probably picked the population to show a result they would consider “better”.
I just think you guys are arguing differenct points. Related, but different.
NJ,
Would you agree that having a poll of adults (rather than voters) in a favorable/unfavorable poll like this, especially so far out from an election is at the very least, perfectly acceptable, and perhaps even preferable in some ways? As I understood it the further out from an election one is, generally the more inclusive a poll should be (in the same vein it would be foolish to poll all adults or even all registered voters 3 weeks before an election rather than likely voters).
Again, thanks for your incredible insights into this.
Snowe, Collins and for that matter McCain, have no idea what’s going on in the real world. They have had their heads stuck where the sun don’t shine for so long they have a nasty outlook on life.
We agree, Chappy. It’s something I’ve kept stressing – our differing takes, which you summed up here:
RE: Tabbaco industry data on cigs:
“I would not feel the need to check the underlying data.”
Try to think of that in a linear, logical fashion, applying your own reasoning. Ask yourself, “do I think smoking cigerettes is dangerous?”.
Applying your own rationale, you can only come to a conclusion after you’ve poured through all the data (and I’d wager there are at least a dozen file storage sites of data to wade through).
The only question then, going by your criteria, is – “have you gone through those mountains of data”?
If you have, then – again, by your criteria – you could have an opinion. If you have not – your criteria again – than you cannot possibly have an opinion if smoking cigarettes is a good thing, a bad thing or something neutral.
It makes me no nevermind to me ay-tall how much stock you put – or not – in “The Daily Kos State Of The Nation Poll” (that’s it’s handle, by the way). Instead, what I have done here is weighed your reasoning and rationale and I found it to be wanting.
You’re more than welcome to disagree with me and I don’t mind that you disagree. That’s what makes life interesting, it’s a “ces’t la vie” thing.
That was hyperbole, NJ-A, like conjuring up the ghost of Einstein to vividly illustrate the difference between my take and Chap’s. If this were the 1700s I’d be the one to write “we hold these truths to be self evident” and Chap would be the one to take exception.
Yet more time wasted defending you refusal to answer rather than just manning up…
Pitiful.
Uhhh…try looking at the example I used. It had nothing to do with a scientific study about the health effects of smoking. A scientific study is not an opinion poll and for you to compare the two is absurd.
If, on the other hand, a cigarette company advertised that 8 of 10 people don’t want public smoking bans (you know…an OPINION POLL), I would want to see the data. I think it is fine to be skeptical but your refusal to criticize the actual data and dismiss it out of hand is intellectually lazy.
And by the way, this is just absolutely pitiful, cutting this quote out of context. Hell that was not even the full sentence.
Let’s see what I actually wrote.
Since I already said I wanted to check the underlying data, what is the conclusion? Hmmmmm?
“Try to think of that in a linear, logical fashion, applying your own reasoning. Ask yourself, “do I think smoking cigerettes is dangerous?”.”
Again, Chappy, I’ve been highlighting your reasoning process, which I found to be not all that consistent. I don’t care if you’re impressed by poll Z or prefer brand X cigars, such examples are what Alfred Hithcock might have called a “MacGuffin”. (If you’re a film buff, you’d get that reference).
As I sez, in the 1700s it would be a “We hold these truths to be self-evident” vs. “Whoa, but what about all the other data?” urinating competition.
And your reasoning process has been to compare apples (opinion polls) to oranges (scientific studies) and then to stick to your baseless preconceived opinion despite someone (NJ Aviator) absolutely destroying your claim on its face.
I am done. You are clearly not capable of carrying on this argument. I am simply going to wait for NJ to respond to the question I posed to him above, if he is so kind, and leave you to believe whatever little ol’ thing you want.
Nope, Chappy, again I’ve stressed your assertion that you cannot know something for sure unless you’ve seen the “data”. That is what you said there, in context.
If that M.O. is how you go about life, then fine and bully for you. Really no need to get upset.
I think that’s good, Chappy. Being upset isn’t helpful and your blood pressure doesn’t need it.
Besides, I was really already done a few posts back in evaulating your reasoning and putting it to the test.
There are probably arguments for both methodologies, but from what I recall from my time in that business, it was typical for polls either not specifically about an election, or far from an election date to be of adults rather than reg, or likely voters. Not in every case, but it was common. The exception being long running tracking polls, or hypothetical match-ups of various prospective candidates.
Another factor was a poll of adults was cheaper to run than one of likely voters. A significant amount of potential respondents had to be screened out to get a sufficient sample of LV.
One disclaimer. I’m not an expert on polling. What I know is what I learned while working for one some years ago. And no, I wasn’t the janitor.
So to answer your question chap, from what I recall and know, yes, it was acceptable to run a poll of this type with adults as the respondents. But not necessarily the rule.
Apologies Peep. I misunderstood the point you were making.
And Chap, my intent was not to destroy Peeps argument. I don’t think I did. My point was to evaluate the poll on it’s face, based on what we see in the results. Which I believe was your point.
I believe Peep was arguing (not to put words in his/her mouth) that it’s prudent (my word) to be pretty damn skeptical of anything associated with Kos, especially a poll. I’m skeptical of what they publish based on what I’ve read at their site. But in this case, there really isn’t anything in the poll to base any skepticism on, except that Kos is the pollster’s client. And that’s admittedly a weak argument in this case.
But that’s just my opinion… and in the grand scheme of things… it probably doesn’t matter all that much.
Not to mention, I think you both said you were done with this subject.
The problem is this was the beginning, middle and end of Peep’s “argument”. It was not “skepticism”, it was outright dismissal and automatically labeling it as necessarily skewed and manipulated to fabricate a desired result. So in that sense, yes you did destroy his argument.
Thanks for your insight. You clearly were more than a janitor there.
Almost, NJ-A, but too inclusive, I’m thinking a more global application. I save my suspension of disbelief for Indiana Jones movies.
Also, I’ve been about the internet for a very long time, NJ-A. If you’ve ever spent any time in IT work (esp. in security) and have an idea of what looks right & what looks funny, you might catch some things that you may otherwise miss.
Some are incredibly obvious; for example, it’s not at all unusual to find leftist bloggers ranting and railing against Rush Limbaugh, demanading that he be taken off the air. It’s just what you’d expect from a leftist. And a conservative blogger is likely to attack “Air America” and it’s hosts. Though conservatives rarely call for their firing, they’re happy just watching AA doing it’s death throes.
So to read some leftist blogsite (using Wordpress, as Michelle does) tirade titled “ENOUGH, LIMBAUGH HAS TO GO!”, it’s politics/business as usual – typical “Those krazy Koz-Kidz and their diaries” eye-rolling type stuff. It’s as shocking as seeing the sun rise in the east.
That’s an entry title from one blogsite, by the way.
The leftist blogger? Delair Ali – aka founder, chief cook and bottle washer, waitstaff, busboy and janitor, DBA “Research 2000″.
The blogsite? Research 2000
(And that’s just skimming the top of the “incredibly obvious”.)
See – all it took was your cries for help and then a re-inventing of what someone else said to feel better about yourself, Chappy. If that’s what it takes to boost your self-esteem and lower your blood pressure, I’m all for it!
purple,
STOP AVOIDING THE REAL ISSUE AND TELL ME HOW THE POLLING WAS MANIPULATED.
You can’t because you have nothing. If you had something you would have used it by now and not looked like a total idiot jumping through every hoop and even making up some new ones to jump through in order to avoid the truth.
Guess what, genius. Lots of people Republican and Democrat think Limbaugh is a tool (mostly cause he is). And yet somehow they are able to get along with their jobs and don’t let their personal opinion affect their work. This Limbaugh thing is just another red herring for you to throw out to obfuscate the sad truth that you don’t want to admit the Kos poll is legit and that fact shatters your narrow little world view.
Until you actually post some ACTUAL CRITICISMS of the ACTUAL POLLING DATA, you continue to make yourself look silly.
Don’t be dense. He has explained to you multiple times that in his opinion, which is a hell of lot more informed than yours, the poll is legit. He can find nothing to indicate anything to the contrary.
You continue to be a petulant child, kicking your feet and going NANANANAICANTHEARYOU!!!! based solely on who paid the bill.
That pretty much sums up your entire argument: childish.
“Down with the corporate media! Down with the Republicans!! Down with them thar wingnut talkshow hosts!!!”
(Hey, that was kinda fun. Now all gotta do is setup a DBA website, look at a few legit polls, change a few things here and there & pass it off as my own – and I’m in business!)
But the bottom line, Chappy, I’m happy you finally feel validation – honestly. Albeit it was via a strained intepration of another commenter after your cry for help. But ya gotta take your self-esteem wherever ya can find it.
I have… and I understand what you mean. Are there ways to manipulate research without being obvious about it and making it exceedingly difficult to uncover? Yes. Seed the sample with more of a particular geography that favors your desired result and make sure your geographical granularity won’t reveal this. The one problem is…. your polls that are conducted in this way will always contradict polls that were not intentionally biased. That in an of itself will raise questions about your polling orgs methodology. Not to mention once called number lists are analyzed, it will be obvious what was done.
I’ll add that I’ve never, ever been involved in that or anything like it. And I know of no polling organization that has or probably ever considered doing such a thing. And there’s nothing to indicate R2000 is doing any such thing. Their poll appears to be legit and in line with similar research. Any claim to the contrary is pretty much baseless from a technical standpoint. But I understand that it could be done. Just as I understand security flaws and other nefarious things related to IT, but would never participate. It’s simply my job to understand… “the dark side” as I suspect it is Peep’s job, or was at some point.
Something I wasn’t aware of was the association of the founder with what appears to be the hard left.
Chap, while we agree that the poll looks to be… a poll. It’s probably reasonable to be skeptical of their research given what PurplePeep pointed out above. I’d have to look into it further, but in the polling business, an obvious and severe political bias… does not help sell your product. At least, not to most clients.
For example, lets say The Christian Coalition founders started a polling business and conducted research on abortion, family values, candidate approvals, etc. Regardless of my lean, I’d take a good hard look at their research before assigning it merit.
Pollsters are “supposed” to be above the fray. Like sportscasters, their not supposed to publicly root for a given team.
So, to use the network security analogy, I’d look at more polls from research 2000 in an attempt to discern a pattern. A single poll that’s out of whack is like seeing some port being hit on one of your public facing devices. Strikes you as odd and raises some flags, but not enough there to nail down what’s going on. So what do you do? You keep watching and dig deeper to find more anomalies.
But as I said, there’s nothing that we can see in the results or stated methodology of this poll that makes it suspect. Other than the background on the pollster, there’s no technical alarms going off.
Sorry to drag this on. But I wanted to acknowledge Peeps issue, as I understand it.
Strained interpretaion? Seriously, you must be being purposely obtuse at this point.
Now read those again and try to keep your idiot cap off while you do it. What is he saying? Skepticism is fine but the poll appears legitimate. What was I saying? Sketicism is fine but the poll appears legitimate. What are you saying? Well on its face you are saying that skepticism means automatic dismissal, which is retarded.
On a deeper level, though, you are saying that you are either an imbecile or purposely disingenuous, neither of which is very good.
I’m guessing the latter. You have proposed absurd analogies to support your opinion (comparing scientific studies to opinion polls) You have outright lied about my position (see post 136). You have bluntly refused to answer my questions after insisting the debate could not continue further until I answered yours (multiple times). You have flatly ignored the plain meaning of words and comments. You have evaded and avoided actually dealing with he issue at had with pathetic attempts to somehow make this about my so called lack of reasoning process using an analogy of an expert witness, which by the way actually contradicts your argument since to discredit an expert witness you actually HAVE TO PROVE THEIR ASSERTIONS WRONG ON THEIR FACE. A fine point you seemed to have missed or ignored.
So if I sound upset, yes I am. I suspect your condescending tone in your last couple posts is meant to tweak my ire. I will admit it is working. Because I have wasted far too much time arguing with either a legitimately mentally handicapped person or a person that went into this debate with zero interest in actually having a debate in good faith.
I hope I am just dealing with a childish intellect. Otherwise I pity your family, and god help any children you may have a hand in raising.
What I’m thinking one has to keep in mind, NJ-A, is that Delair Ali is R2000. If the late George Gallup had himself been Gallup, I’d call BS there, too. Especially if he were given to posting near psychotic, semi-literate rantings filled with trite partisan cliches on the official Gallup site.
I wont even get into the snortworthiness of the “R2000″ site itself, if you have a buddy who’s very experienced in the area of business “internet presence” have him look it over (not just the guy’s rantings). I don’t believe he’d even have to compare and contrast with a known legit polling entity like Gallup to tell you it reeks of your garden variety free Geocities homepage type vanity business. e.g. “We here at MegaSuperStuff will do the bestest work for cheap”. I always assume the guy has hired the Queen Of England just so he can rightfully use the “Royal We”.
Now, keeping that in mind I’d obviously drop “polling organization” and as I’ll show considerations such as “seeding”.
Think “Jesse MacBeth”.
I could quite easily come up with much more detailed, real knock-your-socks off indepth polling data from over the last 10 years on the basic question of what percentage of the American public believes in UFOs. It would take maybe an hour to see what was the historical polling data on the question. It would take me much less time to mirror that data, adding in variations. Afterall, polling isn’t an exact science and like all pollsters, so the data I (er, “We”) came up with would be off once in a great while
. I could produce as many truckloads of background and supporting data as I cared to; though too much reaching around to one’s backside could bring on a bad case of repitive stress syndrome.
The thing is, I’d easily be able to find thousands of who people who would cite my indepth, irrefutable as meaning something one way or another.
If I believed I had been abducted by aliens and felt highly motivated to convince others on their existence, sweeting a wee bit the average I had copied from legit pollsters is no
problem.
If I run into a UFO cult like “Heaven’s Gate” that wants to buy a pollster who can produce mountains of data and help their cause, all the better. I may ger RPS from all the “data-pulling” but I have a well-heeled sugardaddy whose agenda I share to pick up the healthcare tab.
.
That’s elementary, tip o’ the iceburg material. They’s a whole lotta things I didn’t get into here, NJ-A. I’m actually quite pleased this guy is the Kos house “pollster”, I’ll be curious if he’ll be retained as bunker time gets nearer to help Kos lay out plans out New Berlin.
Though you should note the timeframe of that rant against Limbaugh in particular. This was during the Carville/Rahm days of concocting a WH plan against Limbaugh and putting out the talking points for their minions to parrot. Remember the plan was to try to make “Limbaugh the leader of the GOP.”? The guy just kicks out what is expected of him.
Too bad Chappy had to take this so personally. It always kinda amazes me when people get upset onine. I think we’ve both seen even conservative folks who have had – or come close to having – an “online breakdown”. An old saying in the computer world goes: “it’s all ones and zeros”, ie. it’s nothing more than just binary bits of data going back and forth. I would’ve just thanked you for trying to being diplomatic all around and let it go at that. But, we’s all different and I suppose that is what helps to keep this planet interesting.
Lest your feeble mind thinks for whatever reason NJ is agreeing with you.