A Simple Idea: Create our own polls.

[danda]

I don't know about you, but I'm kind of sick of seeing the same old "which candidate would you vote for if the election were held today" type questions. Also, they say that polls can be slanted to show just about anything. So maybe we can make that work for us. And at the same time highlight Dr. Paul's policies.

Here's a few ideas for polls that Ron should easily win:

Which candidate do you think has the most respect for the U.S. Constitution?
Which candidate do you think has the most consistent and principled record?
Which candidate do you think would be most likely to bring our soldiers home from Iraq?
Which candidate would be most likely to reduce the size and scope of government?
Which candidate would be most likely to lower your taxes?


But I'd also like to go further. What if we reverse the logic and create some polls with questions that no candidate would want to win? So for example, we could have poll questions like:


Which candidate do you think would be the *worst* for our country?
Which candidate do you think would be most likely to reneg on his campaign promises?
Which candidate do you think has the most inconsistent record?
Which candidate do you think has the least respect for the U.S. Constitution?
Which candidate do you think would be most likely to increase your taxes?
Which candidate do you think would be least likely to bring our soldiers home from Iraq?
Which candidate do you think would be most likely to get America involved in a war with Iran?
Which candidate do you think is the most fake?
Which candidate do you think is the least intelligent?
Which candidate do you think is the biggest war-monger?





People will actually have to think about these questions a bit because a knee-jerk reaction for their own candidate doesn't work. I think that the results could be more revealing than the popularity contest polls. And I bet Dr. Paul would be consistently very low on these polls. And perhaps some of these polls would be novel or controversial or surprising enough to gain some attention.

That's just a start for some poll topics. Feel free to post other topics below.

Anway, we could do a few things:

- Post these polls on our individual blogs or websites. A few sites exist that offer free polling widgets such as http://www.polldaddy.com/ and http://www.easy-poll.com/

- Suggest these polls to online publishers.

- Include a link to our favorite polls in our email sigs.

- Publish the poll results in our blogs and in letters to the editor, etc.

I've gotta run right now, but if I create some of these polls I'll be sure and post a link here.

[danda]

If we got organized, we could even take these polls offline, and call people. Eg, if we get 50 of us, and we each call 20 people, then we could have a "scientific" poll, but one that is a) fully documented as to what the questions where, and b) asks questions of real importance.

It's easy enough to look-up people nation-wide. www.whitepages.com/ Or confine it to a given state, such as New Hampshire.

Just a thought.

[Lauxa]

I'd be willing to make some calls with a phone poll targeting Iowa or NH. Someone would have to write a "script" though, because I'm really quite nervous about calling strangers. But I'd do it for Ron Paul!

[Proctor]

I am owner of Topicify.com, I run many polls, and have had many polls already successful. If you guys want, I can set them up on my site with my poll script. A lot of people know about my polls already.