Polls, polls, everywhere polls
Posted 27 weeks 3 days ago byThe polls were wrong. Hillary beat Barack. And pundits everywhere are egg-faced today.
There's a lot of discussion today about why, exactly, the polls were wrong, but there's very little discussion about why that should matter.
It shouldn't.
I understand why campaigns use polls. They want to know what voters care about and how best to calibrate their messages. And if the media used polling to do something similar -- figure out what the heck voters care about and calibrate their coverage accordingly, well good. I suspect that happens to an extent.
But polling about support for candidates seems to add a lot of noise and little of substance to the national discussion. Who is up? Who is down? It contributes to all of that horserace coverage that detracts from looking at what the candidacies are all about.
I know: Horse races are fun. I'm not suggesting a ban on these kinds of polls in the media -- not going to happen anyway -- but reflecting on their outsize roll in steering our elections.
I guess the jury's out on whether there's a "bandwagon effect" from polling, but it's clear there's some kind of effect. Otherwise, why would the Clinton campaign rebut the final Des Moines Register poll before the Iowa caucus? For the same reason that networks try not to call election winners before voting places close; because an early announcement of numbers is believed to affect the actions of people who haven't decided, or haven't yet voted.
None of this is going to change. And candidates who talk dismissively about the polls are (usually rightly) seen as being a bit sour-grapish. But that doesn't mean they're wrong.
Thoughts
@Jim, I'd like to point you
Submitted on January 16th, 2008 by OnShakedown@Jim, I'd like to point you to this post on ScienceBlogs.com analyzing the so-called "Diebold Effect"
http://scienceblogs.com/developingintell...
I got the joke.
Submitted on January 11th, 2008 by The Big KlosowskiI'm a big believer in technology and want to see electronic voting machines become the dominant player. Too bad there isn't an open-source project with complete transparency for doing this. I'm afraid that what's happening is making the recount situation seem a normal occurrence, and that every losing candidate will make the demand from this point forward - wasting valuable time and resources.
Diebold
Submitted on January 11th, 2008 by Jim LakelyAnd w/ regards to your comment about Diebold being a "bipartisan election fixer", I'm afraid you're coming across as a bit naive.
I was trying to come across with a joke, since every complaint I've ever heard about Diebold is how Republicans were gaming the machines to take victories away from Democrats. That's all.
And I am familiar with those scanners -- though maybe not Diebold's. My polling place in Fredericksburg, Va., back in the mid-90s used optical scanners. I never felt they were anything but accurate, especially since (if I'm remembering right) it would tell you what it scanned as it did it.
I don't see the point of hand-counting every paper ballot after the machine has already done the work. My understanding is that election officials hand-count a percentage of the ballots (is that the 20 percent?) as a sample to check for accuracy. No election is going to be 100 percent accurate. With hundreds of thousands or millions of votes, some will be miscounted by election workers (there is such a thing as human error, as well as computer error) or spoiled at the fault of the voter.
I'm just saying that it is disheartening to see a reflexive suspicion on the part of losers after nearly every important election these days. Such cries were unheard of before 2000. And unless there is serious and credible evidence of mistakes or misconduct, I piles more cynicism upon our democracy -- which is what we definately do not need.
Re: Re: You were saying, JIm?
Submitted on January 11th, 2008 by OnShakedowni've tried posting here once, but was flagged as spam, so i'm giving it another shot.
@Jim Lakely: It seems you are confused about what kind of electronic voting machines are in use in New Hampshire.
They are using the Diebold Optical-Scan machine which is a vote "counter" not a touch-screen machine. With the optical-scan machines, they count paper ballots the voter fills out, unlike the touch-screen which have no paper ballot. So in New Hampshire, it is possible to 'hand count'.
And w/ regards to your comment about Diebold being a "bipartisan election fixer", I'm afraid you're coming across as a bit naive. First, it has been documented that the optical scan machines are hackable by anyone with the skill to do so (the information on how to do that is online). So any allegations of hacking shouldn't be automatically directed towards Diebold, however they are responsible for the poorly designed machines. A hack could be done by anyone with an agenda and it is incorrect to assume that could only be the Clinton campaign.
It should be noted that there is still no hard-evidence to suggest this vote was hacked, but as long as we have such terrible voting procedures and equipment, we will have people suspecting the worse. and those that brush these allegations and concerns away as being that of conspiracy theorists are doing our democracy a disservice.
cheers,
Jim, you're confused
Submitted on January 10th, 2008 by OnShakedownJim,
you're confused regarding the ability to do hand counts in New Hampshire.
There they are using Diebold optical-scan machines which count paper ballots. They are not the touch-screens that you may be familiar with. Those do not have anything to count. Not the case in N.H. There are boxes and boxes of paper ballots sitting uncounted. 80% of the vote, I believe. (20% are from precincts that do not use the optical-scan vote counters.)
I'm of the opinion that we would be much better off slowing things down a bit and hand-counting all votes rather than trusting a machine to do it, especially when it has been well-documented that those machines are easy to hack into.
Though, it should be noted, there isn't hard evidence to suspect this election was manipulated by the machines, but as long as we have such crappy voting systems, people will always suspect it to be a possibility. And I think they are right to do so.
Joel, thanks for sharing the link. I look forward to seeing more.
Re: You were saying, Jim?
Submitted on January 9th, 2008 by Jim LakelySigh. This figures.
I wonder, though, why there would be "hand counts" of any kind when there are electronic machines in place. A hand checking-type recount, maybe. But if the ballot is electronic, what is there to "hand count."
It is nice to see, though, that Diebold is a bipartisan election fixer ... I guess.
You were saying, Jim?
Submitted on January 9th, 2008 by Ben"I'm just glad, frankly, that the wholly unexpected turn of events hasn't led to screams that Hillary nefariously stole the election."
No, not Hillary. Diebold. An easy mistake to make.
Re: Polls, polls everywhere polls
Submitted on January 9th, 2008 by Jim LakelyIt is truly amazing how wrong the media pundits were on their New Hampshire predictions. But it wasn't just the media. The campaigns themselves didn't see this coming.
Tim Russert last night noted that both Obama's and Clinton's internal polling showed Obama as a double-digit winner.
I'm just glad, frankly, that the wholly unexpected turn of events hasn't led to screams that Hillary nefariously stole the election. Such were the accusations when polls showed Kerry ahead of Bush in Ohio, yet he still lost.
Such sore-loserism and conspiracy nuttiness hurts democracy. I think Hillary legitimately won, and was perhaps a benefactor of the Wilder effect.