Get yer polls, bets, numbers & pretty graphs! Elections 2008

I'm surprised you haven't read the news, I saw it, Democrats decidedly gain when disputed or questionable ballots are deciphered. I read that on a major site not long ago as a news story but I can't find it now, but they probably expunged it by now because it wasn't a good commentary on Democratic voters.

It is obvious you could have gone to any Obama change rally and you would have found mostly ignorant voters.

And for anyone questioning the poll:
"John Zogby said in a statement defending the poll:

I watched it all. He seems pretty articulate, the interviewer found a gem, but I think he is far from typical. I think he said his father was a pediatrician, so he is probably unusually informed in regard to the problems with health care. I agree we have a huge problem with health care, and I also agree that if Obama is telling the truth in regard to his end game policies with health care, his is probably as good or better than Clintons or Edwards proposals. But the fact remains that I basically disagree with the basic approach to fixing the problem, I favored some of the things McCain proposed, plus I would add my own thoughts to the matter.

Also, the interview did not ask any questions about any other issues besides health care to speak of, so how do we know really how informed he is? His father was a pediatrician and he should know something about that issue.

Where do you get an interview with one supporter being an indicator, butrfly, that is not even a plausible argument, and besides how about the woman that said she would no longer have to worry about paying for gas or her house payment, as Obama would pay for it, maybe she is a more typical Obama voter?

Thats why the Zogby poll means something, and the butrfly video means nothing, cyclops, and I think it would be interesting to ask the butrfly video guy the poll questions. He would probably do pretty good, but we don't even know that, do we?

Zogby’s Misleading Poll of Obama Voters

During a campaign, pollsters can build credibility by forecasting election results accurately. Afterward, they can build revenue by using that credibility to attract private clients. These private surveys often have an agenda, and their numbers can’t be tested against an objective standard, such as votes. Such surveys can test pollsters’ standards of conduct.

Zogby International recently conducted a survey for a critic of president-elect Barack Obama and then, together with the sponsor, interpreted the numbers from the survey in a misleading fashion.

John Zogby, the president and chief executive of Zogby International, released a statement on his Web site Tuesday that defended the poll in the face of heavy criticism from bloggers and some media organizations, saying, “We stand by the results [of] our survey work on behalf of [author and former talk show host] John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. … We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that’s exactly what we did.”

But on Wednesday, Zogby told me he was on a book tour* when the contract was reached and when the survey was conducted, and wouldn’t have approved the poll in the form it took, or a press release posted on his firm’s Web site. “This was not Zogby International’s finest hour,” he said. “Something, somehow, fell through the cracks.”

Pollster.com:

The Zogby summary quotes Ziegler claiming that "the poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace."

The problem, as Silver points out, is that the survey does no such thing. It proves only that Obama voters surveyed were less likely to attribute to Obama or Biden a half dozen statements that were "at best debatable, yet apparently represented as factual to the respondent" ...

... Describing his biased, leading questions as a legitimate test of knowledge is hugely misleading, at best.

More or less on the heels of the Fairness Doctrine's repeal came the West Coast and then national syndication of The Rush Limbaugh Show through Mr. McLaughlin's EFM Media. Limbaugh is the third great progenitor of today's political talk radio partly because he's a host of extraordinary, once-in-a-generation talent and charisma"bright, loquacious, witty, complexly authoritative"whose show's blend of news, entertainment, and partisan analysis became the model for legions of imitators. But he was also the first great promulgator of the Mainstream Media's Liberal Bias idea. This turned out to be a brilliantly effective rhetorical move, since the MMLB concept functioned simultaneously as a standard around which Rush's audience could rally, as an articulation of the need for right-wing (i.e., unbiased) media, and as a mechanism by which any criticism or refutation of conservative ideas could be dismissed (either as biased or as the product of indoctrination by biased media). Boiled way down, the MMLB thesis is able both to exploit and to perpetuate many conservatives' dissatisfaction with extant media sources"and it's this dissatisfaction that cements political talk radio's large and loyal audience.

There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

Cyclops, it doesn't work to dismiss a poll simply because you don't like the results. You need more evidence than that.