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View Full Version : The dirty secret of polling concerning independents




EvilEngineer
10-09-2008, 09:02 AM
Currently I'm taking a public opinion course since it was relevant to our current situation and during some of the reading I've been doing I've stumbled across something that no one in the polling world is discussing, but still probably using.

When given two candidates where one is an African American and the other is White, the independent votes are AUTOMATICALLY given to the white candidate. So all these polls that you are seeing between McCain and Obama from "reputable" sources like Rathsmussen, and Gallup have applied this principle. Which means McCain is polling artificially high right now... and we can expect him to be utterly crushed in the general election given the amount of people reporting as independents now.

Oh well... not like we didn't know this already.

ChickenHawk
10-09-2008, 09:12 AM
If that is true it is probably to offset the "Bradley effect". I really doubt they give all independents to McCain. In fact I've read many polls and all of them show significant independent support for Obama.

ChickenHawk
10-09-2008, 09:15 AM
In fact I think there is an outside possibility that there could be the perfect storm of "Bradley effect" and "Shy Tory factor" so that the polls actually exaggerate Obama's support.

fr33domfightr
10-09-2008, 09:28 AM
I questioned the results of some polls recently and wrote to Zogby about it. I was questioning them about WHO they call since they only use landlines and not cell phones. I also questioned them about the time of day, since more men work during the daytime.

I got an answer, which as I recall was from someone named, Zogby. He said they polled over the course of the day, and from the data it looked like they did poll a good portion at night too. They do not call Cell phones, however, stating that they didn't find those results significantly different today. In the future, Cell phones would be included.


FF

Alawn
10-09-2008, 10:39 AM
Obama will win in one of the biggest landslides ever. I can't stand him but this is what will happen.