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DIY Polling Shows Bush, Kerry Will Win
cheese_wallet writes "7-eleven has a poll conducted by the choice of cup their customers pick for their coffee. They can pick a Kerry cup, a Bush cup, or a Third Party/No Opinion cup (interesting combo). Although it is considered completely unscientific, it polls millions of people and gets past the cell phone barrier. You can see the current stats." And reader Noryungi writes "This is very tongue-in-cheek... Harry's Bar, in Paris (France) has been conducting straw polls for the past 80 years, and has been wrong only once, in 1976. So... who is the winner, according to Harry's Bar poll, for the 2004 US election? Kerry. And not by small numbers either, Kerry wins 56% to 44% in the latest Straw Vote, which is a larger margin than all the other US-based pollsters."
Don't use these numbers to do anything important.
Urban areas (where one would find more 7/11s) tend to go Democratic. Hence the inherent bias in the figures.
Kerry's polling well in France? You don't say!
In other crucial election news, busts of Bush and Kerry carved out of hummus became the focus of a controversy when an unknown individual ate part of Kerry's head. It's not known whether this action was politically motivated or if someone simply mistook Kerry for an hors d'oeuvre.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The 7-11 by me only had Bush cups a few days ago.
Either they were trying to swing the poll, or they had sold out of the Kerry cups.
I'm guessing it's the latter, since I live in a fairly liberal area, and all of the local stop signs have been modified to read:
"STOP
BUSH"
According to the coffee-poll site, Kerry + Bush (48.89 + 51.11%) = 100%, but they have 3rd option. No one chose it? Maybe I'm just bitter about corporate sponsored polls, but 7-11's poll seems pretty dicey.
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make install -not war
Every morning before work (if I'm not running too terribly late) I ask myself who I plan to vote for.
So far Kerry's numbers look very good, while Dubya appears likely to be filing for unemployment soon.
Sure, the sample size leaves something to be desired, but I feel my methods are *at least* as accurate as polling drunk expats in Paris.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
...and how is that any different to election day? Vote early, vote often I say :)
Let's assume that the straw poll only takes into account the fact that a 56 - 44 popular vote could still result in a win for Bush in the electoral college.
The 7/11 poll is disturbingly evenly split. The difference is so small that voting irregularities could easily constitute the margin.
Also you have to take into consideration the fact that even if this survey was done on a large enough and evenly dispersed population to be accurate and that everyone voted truthfully, NOT EVERYONE WILL VOTE. Does anyone know if Democrats are statistically more or less likely to actually go out and vote than Republicans.
These three things alone will determine our election.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
These kind of unscientific polls are often misinterpreted by the masses and can demoralize potential voters. This is clearly biased against the most deserving candidate.
Nader ALL THE WAY baby! YEAAAHHH!
Man... that's good pot.
Unfortunately for Kerry, the children's Weekly Reader poll says otherwise.
... I always knew I didn't like kids.
Since 1956, Weekly Reader students in grades 1-12 have correctly picked the president, making the Weekly Reader poll one of the most accurate predictors of presidential outcomes in history.
The lesson? Stick with what you do best 7-11. Selling hot 3-day-old rotating meat logs.
HULK: 9,684 BUSH: 9,472 KERRY: 8,937
This is despite at least one "Kerry-Bot" that tried to stuff the ballot with hundreds of electronic votes (I guess it would be hard to stuff the 7/11 cup vote!) - needless to say, those votes were discounted and that IP address was banned.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
With the Bush cups at the checkup line, I went looking for a Kerry cup. I was told it was "Back there".
I walked through the cooler, into the storage shed in the back, crawled under the chicken wire enclosure, picked the lock on the cabinet door, opened the door, got the cup, took it back to the counter, and was told there was a $5 cooler tax.
Damn battleground states.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
According to 7-11, Bush cup supporters enjoy their coffee with plenty of rich cream and sugar, while Kerry cup supporters prefered they're coffee black or opted for a more international blend. With less the one percent of the cup vote third party cups remained unused, cup voters instead opted for their homemade organic root-marm. When asked about the poll Bush was quoted as saying, "Juan Valdez is a true patriot. Never forget 7-11... er I mean 911." The Kerry camp simply stated, "most young americans don't drink coffee, do you have any questions not related to coffee." Ralph Nader popular third party candidate had this to say. "Corporate America is pulling a fast one at the expense of the American consumer once again with cofee lids that could easily pop off scalding thousands, blinding hundreds."
For grins, I counted the number of United States that are in this poll. The number that I arrived at is: 31.
I guess I could understand if they only omitted Alaska(AK) and Hawaii(HI); however, they left out 38% of the United States! We have 50 states here!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.