Polls... are they accurate, and are they manipulated?

[ga-hvac-tech]

Found myself in rush hour traffic today... and listening to one of the local radio talking heads: Eric Erickson, founder of the website: RedState.com

Eric is a young guy, has a law degree and experience in the courtroom. He has also worked on many a campaign and understands politics quite well (from both sides).

Eric was talking today about how polls are manipulated... it was a seriously involved explanation and I did not get all the details... however here is one scenario to think about:

Surveys show younger people tend to not have landlines, rather only cells. Older folks tend to not use their cells much, rather their landlines. And BHO gives away cell phones (they call them Obammaphones). So if a polling company wants to slant their results to the left... all they have to do is load the calls toward phone numbers the govt is paying for... easy enough.
Oh, and how many folks can you think of who have an out of area--area code in your area... This alone shows polling by area code is grossly in-accurate.

The plot thickens: The crop of new polls out today (Monday the first of October) suggest Mitt Romney is closing the gap again... yet the margins are skewed based on previous polls. So how would this happen? Seems according to Eric on the radio... the pollsters used last weeks averaging numbers, rather than current ones. What does that mean... well I did not get the whole explanation.

As one can see, it is not hard to bias a poll if one wants to... For this reason: GA says the polls probably need to say one candidate is ahead by at LEAST double digit numbers to even take the poll seriously.

This race is not over until Nov 7th... lets see what happens.

BTW: Rush today named a book (and GA forgot the title and author) which explained how totally off base most polling is. The bottom line, as GA has been saying all along is: Whomever is paying for the pole expects the pole to say what they want... money talks. For this reason alone... folks should not take polls seriously.

When, oh when... will the American people gonna grow up and start thinking for themselves?????

[mcjo tech]

Found myself in rush hour traffic today... and listening to one of the local radio talking heads: Eric Erickson, founder of the website: RedState.com

Eric is a young guy, has a law degree and experience in the courtroom. He has also worked on many a campaign and understands politics quite well (from both sides).

Eric was talking today about how polls are manipulated... it was a seriously involved explanation and I did not get all the details... however here is one scenario to think about:

Surveys show younger people tend to not have landlines, rather only cells. Older folks tend to not use their cells much, rather their landlines. And BHO gives away cell phones (they call them Obammaphones). So if a polling company wants to slant their results to the left... all they have to do is load the calls toward phone numbers the govt is paying for... easy enough.
Oh, and how many folks can you think of who have an out of area--area code in your area... This alone shows polling by area code is grossly in-accurate.

The plot thickens: The crop of new polls out today (Monday the first of October) suggest Mitt Romney is closing the gap again... yet the margins are skewed based on previous polls. So how would this happen? Seems according to Eric on the radio... the pollsters used last weeks averaging numbers, rather than current ones. What does that mean... well I did not get the whole explanation.

As one can see, it is not hard to bias a poll if one wants to... For this reason: GA says the polls probably need to say one candidate is ahead by at LEAST double digit numbers to even take the poll seriously.

This race is not over until Nov 7th... lets see what happens.

BTW: Rush today named a book (and GA forgot the title and author) which explained how totally off base most polling is. The bottom line, as GA has been saying all along is: Whomever is paying for the pole expects the pole to say what they want... money talks. For this reason alone... folks should not take polls seriously.

When, oh when... will the American people gonna grow up and start thinking for themselves?????

Good god GA

You will stop at nothing to spin your points.

You are loosing the election regardless of your spin or LAME points.

And stop quoting Lush Rimbough....... try thinking for yourself for a change

Of course, I am on your IGNORE list so you will never see this.

[glennac]

Keep up the good work there GA. Rush tells it like it is. I don't mind if he gets carried away a little since I'm upset just like Rush about where this country is going and hell is not a very good place unless you are in league with the devil and anti Christian and I think we know which party that is don't we. LOL. Thank you, thank you very much.

[wolfstrike]

there's no such thing as a non-manipulated poll.
they have no ability to call everyone up at the same time and ask them the same question.
polls very from state to state, what time of day, what questions are asked.
they can make anything look like anything.

there are a lot of people across the country who only want to vote for the person who wins, so simply by claiming one candidate is ahead will
manipulate a vote

the truth is, the media should never claim any candidate or proposition is ahead

[AStudent]

there's no such thing as a non-manipulated poll.
they have no ability to call everyone up at the same time and ask them the same question.
polls very from state to state, what time of day, what questions are asked.
they can make anything look like anything.

there are a lot of people across the country who only want to vote for the person who wins, so simply by claiming one candidate is ahead will
manipulate a vote

the truth is, the media should never claim any candidate or proposition is ahead

There are also many people that would only vote for the losing team....for some reason I really crave rooting for the underdog.

[DeltaT]

I also heard something about how the polls were taken and then the data was "weighed." The weighing part brings into a lot of factors as the pooling radio person talked about. Some of the points I caught from his talk is that women tend to answer the phone more than men so more women will vote for a feel good candidate such as obama.

Then men tend to vote based on a candidates success and experience and set aside all the emotional stuff cause they know someone has to pay the bill. So men's votes are weighted another way.

Then there are the rich zip code and the poor zip codes. Pretty much a polster can get the answer they are looking for.

As for are the recent polls accurate.....definately not. They are being minupulated just as obama and his followers pretty much minupulate everything.

[mcjo tech]

I also heard something about how the polls were taken and then the data was "weighed." The weighing part brings into a lot of factors as the pooling radio person talked about. Some of the points I caught from his talk is that women tend to answer the phone more than men so more women will vote for a feel good candidate such as obama.

Then men tend to vote based on a candidates success and experience and set aside all the emotional stuff cause they know someone has to pay the bill. So men's votes are weighted another way.

Then there are the rich zip code and the poor zip codes. Pretty much a polster can get the answer they are looking for.

As for are the recent polls accurate.....definately not. They are being minupulated just as obama and his followers pretty much minupulate everything.

So you are predicting a Romney win right?

Otherwise regardless of what you think is going on with the polls your point would be moot.

Doesn't matter what the polls show. Only thing that matters is who wins.