American Thinker: MSNBC Distorts its Own Poll

[sailingaway]

I know we knew this at the time, but it is nice to see in print....

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/09/msnbc_distorts_its_own_poll.html

[sickmint79]

as a programmer i wonder if this was actually just a bug.

[Original_Intent]

as a programmer i wonder if this was actually just a bug.

as a programmer, I think the chances are slim that this is due to a bug.

[lucky_bg]

As a not programmer, I think you don't need to be programmer to make this chart. You need excel, and whenever I made charts in Excel they never looked like that one at MSNBC.

[djruden]

as a programmer i wonder if this was actually just a bug.

I've kind of had this line of thinking too. Could be that their current poll software just wasn't made to handle such large voting blocs or rarely has such outstanding winners. It's not always a conspiracy.

[InTradePro]

as a programmer i wonder if this was actually just a bug.

Right now it could be a 'feature' but initially the polls showed Dr Paul and Mitt Romney with exactly the same length line even though Dr Paul had many more votes
http://buck000.smugmug.com/Other/Miscellaneous/i-PdbR6tZ/0/O/msnbcpoll.jpg

from http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?314249-MSNBC-quot-Buffers-quot-Ron-s-Poll-Results-*CALL-TO-ACTION*.

[libertyjam]

Right now it could be a 'feature' but initially the polls showed Dr Paul and Mitt Romney with exactly the same length line even though Dr Paul had many more votes
http://buck000.smugmug.com/Other/Miscellaneous/i-PdbR6tZ/0/O/msnbcpoll.jpg

from http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?314249-MSNBC-quot-Buffers-quot-Ron-s-Poll-Results-*CALL-TO-ACTION*.

Really that looks like a scaling and saturation of scale issue that got noticed, so I'm thinking not intentional.

[Feelgood]

I agree. Ive done enough web design to know not to jump the gun on this one. I think once it was brought to their attention, it was simply corrected. There are easily problems that can happen to make the graph not update properly.

Have we already forgotten the pledge graph that allowed anyone to enter any amount on the campaigns web page? Before you knew it there was over $10 million dollars in pledges. Other conspiracy theorists could claim the Ron Paul campaign was simply trying to inflate the popularity of their campaign and potential contributions!

Bottom line, not EVERYTHING is a conspiracy. Just because there are blatant patterns of media bias in the past, does not mean that there could not easily have been an honest mistake made. I really wish alot of the paranoid uber conspiracy theorists would just go away. You people really make the entire movement look bad, you really do. The truthers, the birthers, the Alex Jones wanna be's...

Please if you really care about this movement, youll go away and stop tarnishing that which we are trying to accomplish.

[asurfaholic]

We arent the only ones who think its distorted. But its a non issue to me. At least they left the poll up...

[Chainspell]

i did this yesterday. its clear that it was intentionally done to show only halh of what ron paul got. or more easily seen--they gave other candidates twice the amount of votes:

http://i54.tinypic.com/2d1tuoo.gif

you see the green bars is twice as long as it should be

[Feelgood]

Can we just lock this thread before all the conspiracy guys chime in to make the movement look even less credible? This really does get old...

[Zatch]

Wow, I can't believe this was on American Thinker.

[sailingaway]

I agree. Ive done enough web design to know not to jump the gun on this one. I think once it was brought to their attention, it was simply corrected. There are easily problems that can happen to make the graph not update properly.

Have we already forgotten the pledge graph that allowed anyone to enter any amount on the campaigns web page? Before you knew it there was over $10 million dollars in pledges. Other conspiracy theorists could claim the Ron Paul campaign was simply trying to inflate the popularity of their campaign and potential contributions!

Bottom line, not EVERYTHING is a conspiracy. Just because there are blatant patterns of media bias in the past, does not mean that there could not easily have been an honest mistake made. I really wish alot of the paranoid uber conspiracy theorists would just go away. You people really make the entire movement look bad, you really do. The truthers, the birthers, the Alex Jones wanna be's...

Please if you really care about this movement, youll go away and stop tarnishing that which we are trying to accomplish.

That's pretty harsh. On a heavily trafficked web page it misrepresented our guy's popularity. Without calling it a conspiracy, I think pointing out the votes Ron actually got is not a bad thing.

And it is very cool that American Thinker was defending Ron.

[Tod]

When I first looked at the graph, the bars were off. Later, they were correct. Yet later, they were off again.

Without knowing how the bars are being generated, it seems like it would be difficult to determine actual manipulation, accidental error, or just a bug.

[Paul4Prez]

Can we just lock this thread before all the conspiracy guys chime in to make the movement look even less credible? This really does get old...

Huh? There's no excuse for a bar graph on a major media website to be out of proportion. They were alerted to this fact, and it remained out of proportion after that. MSNBC has the credibility issue, not people who are calling them on it. If it were an honest mistake, it would have been easily corrected.

[Esoteric]

Can we just lock this thread before all the conspiracy guys chime in to make the movement look even less credible? This really does get old...

No, because it's likely that there WAS a god damn conspiracy. I think "skeptical" or "inquisitive" would be the preferred nomenclature.

[Chainspell]

Can we just lock this thread before all the conspiracy guys chime in to make the movement look even less credible? This really does get old...
Wow I just read that as: let's silence Ron paul because his values don't represent the status quo. in fact while were at it let's minimize and marginalize him and make him look CRAZY.

Be careful of who you are becoming.

Respect their personal liberty to discuss things in a public forum. It's true ron paul has a lot of asked jonesy supporters. Should we distort this truth just so mainstream will accept us? Let them have all the facts and let them decide.