Senate Candidate Wants to Ban Polling

Masker writes "This is just too funny. Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, who is running against Democrat Barack Obama, wants to ban political polling for 'a certain period' before the election, since such polls are 'manipulative and degrading and damaging to our political system.' Could his opinion be influenced by a recent poll that shows Keyes trails by 45 percentage points behind Obama?" Could be. But it could also be influenced by the fact that polls are often wrong; they influence how people vote (people are less likely to vote for someone who "doesn't have a chance"), and polls get reported on more than issues, which can't be good for anyone except the pollsters and whoever happens to be leading the polls.

Comments

polls are often wrong?

[kootch]

I don't understand why that link was for "polls are often wrong" when the first 2 paragraphs of the story it linked to specifically say:

"A review of the 159 Governor and U.S. Senate polls reported by the media in 2002 shows a very good performance for most polling organizations. The average candidate error for all polls was 2.4 percentage points. 84% of the polls differed from the election outcome by less than their theoretical margin of error."

I'm confused.

this + electronic voting

[jafuser]

Combine this with electronic voting with no paper trails, and you have a great way to rig an election, since nobody has any idea roughly how it should have come out to even contest the validity of the electronic votes.

Other reasons he's behind in the polls?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois

It should be noted that Alan Keyes isn't FROM Illinois, he is merely running in the Senate race. I don't think that in itself is bad, but it is probably one of the many reasons he is trailing in the polls.

I seem to remember Keyes once saying that people from out-of-state SHOULDN'T run for a state office, but I can't find that quote now, so maybe I'm just spreading nasty rumors. But it's ok, because I fufilled my duties.

So Alan Keyes, another Republican who wants to control things. There was once a day when Republicans were about NOT controlling things, but that time is long gone.

Re:Other reasons he's behind in the polls?

[Atzanteol]

*sigh* This is a huge pet peeve of mine...

Separation of church and state:

• Is not in the constitution (as most people think)
• Does not mean nobody can have religion
• Even if their in public office
• Is *not* about removing religious symbols from public property

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" not "Congress shall tear down religious symbols wherever it may annoy citizens."

Allowing a court house to have the 10 commandments in front of it is hardly passing a law respecting or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. This is called "Freedom of Religion" people. The right to actually have a religion.

Re:And?

[Unordained]

... it's bipartisan politics because we let it be. When I get polled, the questions are: which of "the two" (Bush/Kerry) are you planning on voting for, and why (like him/dislike opponent/issues) ... there's no room for saying that I -will- vote for a third candidate, nor to say that I'd rather vote for a third candidate.

With polls like that, no wonder everyone thinks the "independent candidates" are pointless to vote for -- we don't think they have a chance because we don't know how not-alone we are in our opinion, and our system makes our votes "useless" if not voting for the top two candidates.

If we had a smarter voting system, polls might make less sense -- your decision to vote for a candidate wouldn't have a reason to be influenced by who had the best chance of winning among your personal "okay" list. Rather than banning them (which is stupid and wrong) let's make them irrelevant?

Why stop there

[eyeball]

Ban voting. It also can also affect election outcome. Unless you live in Florida.

I agree, polls are bad.

[dbcad7]

Sadly, I have seen the effect of polls...

Perot, Dole, Clinton race.. I was working in a small retail store. The owner (my boss) talked for weeks of voting for Perot (after all Perot was a bidnessman)... I watched the store while he went to vote. He came back and blew my mind by stating "I voted for Clinton, because he is going to win anyway" (this is what I call the football game mentality of polls ... he wanted to be a "WINNER")

Of course after that I always thought of him as a real winner ! :)

I firmly beleived polls should be blacked out at some time period before the actual election day

Personaly, I can wait until the next day to find out the results.. .especialy if it encourages people to vote for who they "really" wanted.

regards

dbcad7

Ban Polling?

[Polo]

...but they can't do that.

That's the primary way we're going to get CowboyNeal elected!

bah

[elmegil]

Keyes is the Jerry Springer of politics. He's an idiot and he's an asshole. He's stated his intention to make one outrageous statement a day until the election, and I suppose this is one of the more recent ones (to go along with his commentary about Mary Cheney "misusing her genitals", etc).

Why he even agreed to enter this race is amazing, and the fact that the state Republican Party saw fit to pull him instead of the number two Primary winner (after Jack Ryan's campaign imploded over relatively irrelevant allegations from a contentious divorce) is a mystery to those of us who live here. The #2 guy was Jim Oberwies, a well known (in Chicagoland anyway) conservative dairy owner, who was a completely viable candidate--easily with more connection to the residents of Illinois than Keyes, and easily conservative enough to be electable with the more conservative downstate electorate.

All Keyes entry does is prove that all the negative rhetoric about Hillary not really being from NY is just so much hot air on the part of the GOP. He's clearly going to lose, and I can't think of any of the republicans I know here who want to vote for him given his public record as a lunatic and a jerk. Being behind 45 points in the polls is probably accurate given the distaste for the man here, regardless of the accuracy of polls in general.

Ah...many countries actually do this

[Nice2Cats]

This is just too funny.

Sorry to distrub your editorializing here, but there are in fact quite a number of countries that do this. Other things more modern democracies have found out work pretty well are not announcing any election results until everybody's vote is in (aw, the Californian says, why go vote, Gore is going to win anyway); vote on a Sunday so people don't have to skip work; give everybody the same ballot sheet; give every person one vote instead of some screwy system with a bunch of middlemen who distort the effect of the popular vote.

As with the legal system and electricity, America's electorial system suffers enormously from being one of the first ones implemented and the inability of Congress to pass any serious reforms. Get rid of trial by jury, switch to 220 volts, make it a direct vote, and then you will be ready to enter the 21. Century. Computers that run with 220 volts are twice as fast!

someone wanted to organize a vote on that issue

[dario_moreno]

but gave up because the polls showed that the bill would not pass.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

You miss the question here, it isn't about whether people should try to persuade others or not to vote in a certain way, it is a matter of whether people should be voting for something because "5 out of 6 Pepsi drinkers prefer candidate X."

Some of us have an opinion that voting for something based on its popularity is damaging to the political system. We have the opinion that people should vote on the merits of the candidates or resolution being proposed.

Too bad our electoral system doesn't support real choice.

A Republican response...

[DesScorp]

I'm a Republican, and let me say this about Keyes running in Illinois: it's hypocritical in the extreme. Hillary shouldn't have been allowed to run in New York, and Keyes shouldn't have been allowed to run in Illinois. The very concept of a famous person moving to a place just because they think they can win a race stinks. It's basically giving a big backhand to the idea of representative democracy.

When all is said and done, I think that overall, the GOP will win big this year. But when you ask party leaders what they'd do differently, in private they'll tell you that importing Keyes was a huge fuckup, and will likely hurt them in Illinois for years (a state with a not-insignificant 21 electoral votes). Maybe Barrack Obama was going to win no matter who ran against him. But something about the mindset of the GOP in Illinois really bugs me. When Ryan backed out of the race, and Ditka wouldn't run, there was this assumption that since the Dem's were running a black candidate, hey, we have to have a black candidate too. That's stupid thinking number one; just get a good candidate, color or sex not being part of it. Stupid thinking number two comes in when they've decided that they HAVE to have a black candidate, and we've found this woman that's a doctor, and a loyal republican, longtime resident of Illinois. BUT WAIT......Let's bring in Alan Keyes instead! Never mind that he's never LIVED in Illinois before.

Put this one into the "what not to do" section of campaigning.