RealClearPolitics - Election 2008

One more day to go.

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Formerly W.E.B. Du Bois (you can still call me "WEB")

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Arrgh...I really don't like polls because they too often shape popular opinion. Instead of trying to predict how people are going to vote, why not just wait until they actually do and then report on who got what percentage of support?

Polls are just a tool used to coerce people to vote certain ways. Yet another way for the corporate owned media to exact some form of control on the proceedings. A negative side effect of the "information age".

Sad but true...btw WEB, is that "the" WEB Du Bois on your avatar picture there?

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Well they do shape popular opinion in my case. It's pretty complicated for me though, so I won't get into that too much.

I will just say that people like myself watch the 2008 race both as an activist and a "political handicapper." In other words the latter comment means that I just want to see how the race is going.

This poll result is big news and a major upset, as Hillary and Mitt Romney (both of who are now second) were projected to win this crucial state.

BTW, it is BS to say that the corporate media is controlling anything. You don't have a shred of proof to back that up and your comment is just a foreign and ignorant opinion based upon condescension and blind hate towards the US.

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Yes, it is.

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I must admit I kinda overread that passage you quoted to on the first way through - but it does hold some truth. While the media in general (or evil corporate media as mentioned by tundra) surely does not control or, if you will, tamper with the polls, since you agreed yourself (and it has been prooven to be so) that these polls do shape public opinion or atleast have some sort of influence on voters, and since these polls are generally published and in some cases even unteraken by media companies this leads to these companies having an influence on the outcome of an election which leads us to them being able to excercise some sort of control - wether they effectively and consciously use it or not, I wouldn't say I've read enough about it to be able to give an educated opinion.

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I can understand wanting to see how the race is going, but the information given in polls is based on data that may as well be collected out of thin air.

For instance, CNN reported the latest poll percentages and notice in the small print at the bottom of their screen that the margin for error is plus or minus 5 percentage points. 5 percentage points is an awful lot when some of the candidates are being reported as being within 5 points of each other.

That means you could have someone polling at 15 percent and in third or fourth place, while actually they're at 20 percent and in first or second. It is these poll placings that the general public sees and it leads them to make judgments in their head as to who looks like the stronger candidate.

And it's a decision they'll be basing on a completely unscientific numbers, arrived at by data collectors who are employed by media companies who have an interest in seeing things politically go their way. Which means that it's basically coersion.

Now...I don't know how you got from that, that I'm being hateful toward the U.S.. On the contrary I consider the U.S. a friend to Canada. I like the U.S. a lot, and I admire what America's founding fathers believed in and what they created.

I did point out that the media is corporate owned. This is not some wild conspiracy theory, just go on any media outlets website and you can look and find the company that owns it and the people who sit on the boards of directors for those companies.

And since the mainstream media are actually corporations - it's obvious those corporations are responsible for what news is reported to all of us.

This is not a U.S./Canada hatred thing. We have the same problem. In case you don't know, we have all the same media coverage here that you do...and we have Canadian owned mega media corporations here as well.

It's no different here we have the same problems and, if anything we have to filter through even more corporate media junk because we get your channels and news networks, and Britain's, and ours. At least in the U.S. you don't have to put up with Canadian and British channels too. You have American media coverage and that's it, one set of corporations.

As far as having a shred of proof goes...well, do I really need that? It's like needing proof that the sky is blue. It just is...and the same with our newspapers, tv, radio, pretty much everything. It's all owned just have a look at their company websites as I've said.

So, since it's owned of course the messages you receive from the media are going to be controlled by those that own it. It's just the way it works, the ones with the power over the airwaves are always going to have influence over the people...and it's like that everywhere in the world, not just here or in the U.S..

Lastly, you really needn't be upset with me...I'm not upset with you at all...we're just debating and discussing the issues.

That's BS. You're saying that people's opinions are fake and that is a baseless conspiracy theory.

Let's say that it does have a plus or minus 5 percent margin of error. So what? That's what the poll is worth. It gives its results and there is a margin of error. That is completely honest and straightforward. I don't see what the problem is. If the poll says that you can see where the limitations of the poll are, what more can one ask for?

That's BS. Given that your first argument made no sense at all, it just shows that your whole argument is just as weak. So what are you precisely claiming here, that the pollsters are just lying? That they receive a response from someone saying they like Giuliani for example and they record it as McCain? Did you arrive at that conclusion based upon that earlier ridiculous argument you have about how it's dishonest to have a margin of error?

Well at least you say that your media is flawed too. I would just say that your theory on the media is just flawed in general and perhaps not anti-American. Make no mistake, your ideas about this are totally flawed. I just thought that you applied those ideas only to the United States. At least when you say your country is just as bad, at least that is fair enough.

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No, I don't agree. I never said that the media has any influence on public opinion. It is the people of New Hampshire who have had an impact on public opinion. It is the structure of the US primary system that puts the primaries in a certain chronological order that has had an impact on public opinion.

The people who were polled were not news anchors, but people in New Hampshire. The people of New Hampshire are the ones influencing others. You merely took what I said and used it not in any rational way, and tried to twist it to fit into your own pre-existing beliefs about the media and corporate influence.

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Well, you posted that "they do shape popular opinion in my case". Since "popular opinion" and "my case" did not seem to fit together I'm still not sure what you intended to say with that sentence.

Let me use a rather recent example we experienced in Austria of how polls can and do alter the outcome of an election, specially by encouraging or "de"couraging certain voters - I'm gonna go back to our 2006 elections of the national assembly/parliament.

Polls were predicting a rather clear win by the ÖVP (people's party) with a lead of a couple of percent points - a rather substantial lead considering it was a nationwide election. Looking back at the election, it has been found out that many core-ÖVP voters simply stayed at home, partly because, well, polls showed their party would win anyways.

The outcome of it all? The SPÖ wound up with a lead of 1% in the end, making it the strongest party in the country again. Polls do tend to a sort of "why, it's not like my vote made any difference" sort of attitude - I mean, polls, nomatte rhow scientifically they are done, generally are done by asking only a few thousand of people, and have interestingly always been rather close to the result in the end (margin of error considered). That pretty much leaves the taste that it doesn't make any difference if these couple of thousands vote or the entire country votes - which, if the polls are done right, is the way polls are meant to work anyways.

Now I admit that the influence of polls on the public opinion is more than dubious, if anything, but that polls do influence the outcome of an election is, imo, without doubt.

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