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Math Indicates Pollster Is Forging Results

Posted by Soulskill on from the lies-damned-lies-and-statistics dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Nate Silver suggests the political pollster Strategic Vision is 'cooking the books. And whoever is doing so is doing a pretty sloppy job.' Silver crunched five years worth of their polling data, and found their reported results followed a suspicious pattern which traditionally suggests fraud. The five-year distribution of the numbers 'is not random. It's not close to random.' The polling firm had already been reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for failing to disclose their methodology, though the firm argues they did comply with the organization's request. Their response to Silver's accusation? 'We have a call in to our attorney on this and fully intend to take action that will vindicate us.'"

2 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why should I care? by plague911 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Strategic Vision is a Republican pollster. Meaning when a Republican politician wants a poll about a particular set of data they give Strategic Vision some money and they do a poll. This can be for either internal polling to give them and idea how the "battle" is going or for general consumption. And yes Strategic Vision is big enough to matter, but they are just the tip of the iceberg how misleading "R" pollsters

    In general there are some Republican some Independent and some Democrat pollsters however all of their results are supposed to be scientific the idea is dose a poll for internal consumption really help if tells you that you are going to win easily on election day only to have to be a landslide against you?The answer is no.

    The reason why this is dangerous is multi fold. 1) Due to the supposed scientific nature it has been used to make public policy decisions 2) It can influence peoples opinions. 3) It can influence a senator's or some other politicians choices while they are in power.

    Here is a perfect example of this. A certain Republican senator from Maine is considering if she should support a public option, so she wants to see what the citizens of her state think about the topic. She hires Strategic Vision to do a poll for her. Strategic Vision comes back and says 60% of your state's citizens are against it. She gose "Wow I guess im not supporting that bill" In reality its 60% the other way. From this the senator decides to not support the bill and it dose not pass.

    I will be as blunt as possible. I am accusing Rasmussen, Strategic Vision and other Republican pollsters of deliberately lying to the American people in order to alter the public debate. If you follow the math they have been consistently off for years. If you want to just look at the last election cycle Rasmussen etc all had the results a lot tighter than the results on election day. This could just be poor polling on their part but I will offer exhibit B

    Since health care reform has been a topic in the news the difference between the several Republican pollsters and "everyone else" has been steadily growing. I firmly believe that the insurance industry has been paying these pollsters to lower their numbers for the democrats to push them to drop health care reform.

    Yes the Democrats poll numbers have been sliding somewhat across the board. However if you look at the data from the Republican sources. They have the numbers significantly different than those of the "Independent and Democratic" pollsters.

    Over all I want to say this "dishonest polling" helps no one. It may help push a certain agenda temporarily but It can also cause those who support it to loose elections..... Look at the results from 2008 the REPUBLICAN PARTY IS BEING MISLEAD BY ITS OWN POLLSTERS AND IT IS COSTING THEM ELECTIONS

  2. Nothing new by hawk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I did a statistical analysis off the year 2000 "recount" almost 9 years ago, looking at the counties with "unusual" results.

    There were six counties in which the changed votes didn't fit the normal bell curve, four benefiting Gore and two Bush.

    Both of Bush's and one of Gore's had rules in which replacement ballots were made for idiot voters who used an X rather than filling the bubble, explaining them.

    One of Gore's had machine problems in the recount and stuck with the original figures.

    And then there were the two counties, which accounted for the lion's share of the "correction" from the recount.

    One of them was 50 standard deviations out--so far out that it is less likely than winning the California Lottery every week for thirteen weeks running . . .

    I wasn't the only one to notice the oddity, but the sad fact is that noone cares . . .

    hawk