Apparently a primer on online polls needs to be posted. Because the last 24 hours have been silly

[Godhumor]

From all the way back in 2000

Why Online Polls Are Bunk

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/net_election/2000/01/why_online_polls_are_bunk.html

A poll purports to tell you something about the population at large, or at least the population from which the sample was drawn (for example, likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire). Surprising though it may seem, the results of a scientific poll of a few hundred randomly sampled people can be extrapolated to the larger population (to a 95 percent degree of confidence and within a margin of error). (For a primer on "margin of error" and "degree of confidence," see this Slate "Explainer.&quot But the results of an online "poll" in which thousands or even millions of users participate cannot be extrapolated to anything, because those results tell you only about the opinions of those who participated. Online polls are actually elections, of a kind. And elections, while a fine way to pick a president, are a decidedly poor way to measure public sentiment.

Why aren't online polls an accurate measure of public opinion?

1. Respondents are not randomly selected. Online polls are a direct descendent of newspaper and magazine straw polls, which were popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The print-media straw polls (very different from today's political straw polls but equally inaccurate) featured clip-out coupons that readers sent in to cast ballots for their preferred candidate. Other organizers of straw polls mailed ballots to people on a list of names. The most infamous of these took place in 1936 when Literary Digest sent 10 million presidential ballots to people, based on telephone directories and automobile registration lists. More than 2 million of the ballots were returned, and based on the results, the magazine predicted Republican Alf Landon would carry 57 percent of the popular vote and defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a landslide.

Literary Digest was wrong, of course, and straw polls never recovered, at least as a predictive tool. Reader and viewer surveys continue to prosper, however, in magazine contests, on TV shows like CNN's TalkBack Live, and on Web sites.
------------
Other factors include socioeconomic choices and static question choices.

[JaneyVee]

1. And don't forget, Republicans vote too.

[RobertEarl]

9. But DU's polling?

90% of DUers are Bernie supporters.

One reason is few republicans vote here.

[zappaman]

11. Yeah so?

Ask President Kucinich his opinion.

[Hortensis]

31. I strongly suspect a good portion of Bernie's following is made up of

people who are socially conservative but come here because they are economically more liberal for various reasons.

[m-lekktor]

2. I don't even know why they bother with this type of polling. nt

[PoliticAverse]

15. Because they get people to visit their websites. n/t

[cascadiance]

3. Just proves that the media's 1%er's "consensus" opinion is even MORE bunk!

As their OPINION is even LESS representative of public opinion than these polls are.

I think that we do have a good measure that internet saavy and ACTIVE surfers are more apt to support Bernie, do we not? Even if it can't yet be extrapolated towards the general public completely. That to me shows an added strength that Obama also had in 2008 in terms of strength in online activism in 2016. What we can conclude from that remains to be seen, but I think it does mean that there this group that will use power to counteract the corporate speak of the media today too.

[Godhumor]

5. No, you can't make that conclusion

And to do so is to miss the entire point of the primer.

[cascadiance]

10. Why not? Why are millionaire on-air reporters serving 4 oligopoly media corporations less "bunk"?

Why are their opinions of "what America feels" less narrowly opinionated than many online polls?

Article points:

1. Respondents are not randomly selected.

Well people randomly come on links to some degree, even if they tend to be certain demographics more than others. Those in the corporate media who express THEIR opinions of who "won", are definitely NOT randomly selected even moreso, and in fact by the nature of the business where they themselves are more apt to be in the 1% and certainly work for the corporate oligopoly controlled by the fraction of 1% at the top who governs a lot what they say.

2. Socioeconomic bias.

Those that work in the corporate media making these stories are even in a higher and more narrow wealthier class than online respondents to polls. Convince me otherwise!

3. Questions and answers are always given in the same order

Poll respondents don't even control the narrative of the questions, where the corporate media controls EVERYTHING about what they write in their "analysis".

The media also has the added issue of needing to "play the game" to continue to have access to the corporate blessed candidates, and therefore can't deviate from the corporate blessed media message.

Bottom line as I said before that polls may not be conclusive, and many of us have said that about the polls up to this point being more of a name recognition exercise, which like in 2007 were skewed earlier towards Clinton and both then and now are moving towards Obama then and now to Bernie as that variable is less of a factor. The media then was also just as wrong then about blessing the corporate selection for president as they are now.

This election, more than others in the past, is going to be decided by those walking the streets to different houses, etc., and other modes of communication. Just like the middle east had an Arab Spring where they had gotten fed up enough with the BS in charge, we are feeling the same here now too.

[Godhumor]

14. I wasn't referring to pundits having opinions

I was referring to your belief that an online poll shows anything meaningful.

It doesn't.

[cascadiance]

19. But many are trying to selectively say that internet polls supporting Bernie don't mean anything...

... which implies that the other "stories" from the corporate media with the media's opinion that Hillary won are more meaningful. I was just pointing out that the corporate media's opinion are less meaningful than the slices of opinion from internet polling.

Just want to make sure that point gets in so that somehow people feel that Hillary won because the press's opinion counts somehow and internet polling doesn't, when the press in my book has more meaningless opinion than internet polls.

[Godhumor]

22. Fair point on the pundits

And, you're right, they do get more play for writing for the sites themselves. So in the battle of pundit opinion versus worthless click polls we can probably agree that neither should be considered factual.

[cascadiance]

25. Yep, exactly!

We just need to make sure that one doesn't get selectively pushed aside to push the other to further one side's views...

I think we need to wait for more scientific polls, and as I note down in another post here, even those I think still are a bit biased at times the way they sample people.

Hillary didn't "blow up" tonight, and for the most part was pretty polished. I think others are right about that. But I don't think Americans want someone just because they are a polished speaker. They want substance too this time around. They learned that if they don't get substance drilled down on, we will get another candidate saying they want to "renegotiate NAFTA" as if it is a good thing and get someone pushing a worse trade bill in TPP to us and a fast track bill that will possibly enable a subsequent Republican administration doing even nastier stuff. I think Americans now are looking for more details of what a candidate will do, and not how stylized they tell us what they will do, or how well they avoid looking "raw" by having more details of what they want to do that we want this time around. Americans want real solutions on how to overturn the system of corruption we have in place now.

If anyone blew up last night, I think it was Chaffee. Trying to blame two of his issues of being a "green senator" is pretty lame. You might be able to get away with it with one answer that way, with a lot of additional explanation on how you've rectified yourself since that vote, but twice makes it sound like you really aren't doing what party constituents want and haven't had a good history of always working for what this party wants (especially when you were once a Republican). Webb just looked a bit scary to me, and I don't think is going to move much anywhere from what he said and just keep a small pocket of the extreme Dems that for some reason don't want to be Republicans in line.

I thought O'Malley actually had one of the nicer closing statements, even if it wasn't serving himself, but helped characterize the debate better about those being a part of it looking more towards solutions than a lot of partisan and useless bickering that the Republicans have had.

[wyldwolf]

13. LOL - poll truthers.

[reformist2]

4. It's not silly at all. I really want to know what the hell all these Hillary supporters are doing.

It's time they made their presence known. Otherwise, I'll really start to question their enthusiasm, and their ability to get Hillary elected next year, if she's the nominee.

[workinclasszero]

7. We will show up in the only poll that matters

The voting booth on election day.

[reformist2]

8. Like magic? Like magical mushrooms, sprouting up just in time for Election Day?

[zappaman]

12. You just gonna spend the whole day defending internet polling?

[Hortensis]

32. You want ME to play these trash-poll games? Not going to happen.

Here's what matters, Reformist -- I vote in EVERY election.

[global1]

6. To All Responders To The Original Post......

Please disregard it if Hillary wins the hearts and minds of those on the Internet.

[Motown_Johnny]

16. But shouldn't the results vary enough to show more than one consistent result?

I agree that they are not scientific, but a consistent pattern is significant.

If you just roll the dice then you would expect a variety of results. If you tend to keep getting 7, then odds are the dice are loaded.

If internet polls were just giving random results, you would expect to see a variety of results. When they all agree, there is a reason for it.

[Godhumor]

17. No, the dice are loaded in this case

And is one of the inherent failings in this kind of polling. Without taking broadly, the behavior was seen here yesterday when Bernie supporters began posting links to all the polls and other supporters began bragging about how many they voted in.

[tritsofme]

28. Ron Paul routinely dominated these sorts of online polls in his campaigns.

Without even coming close to approaching the level of support Sanders currently enjoys.

It shows they have a core of dedicated supporters willing to run up the score in online polls, but very little else.

[Motown_Johnny]

30. Did every focus group also think he won?

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. One important thing is to distinguish between type of 'online' poll

Yes, polls on a site that are "click here to say who you thought won the debate" are fairly meaningless, showing just the enthusiasm of a particular readership, or how quickly partisans can gather the troops to flood a poll.

Polls done via computer by a professional polling organisation, drawing people at random from a large pool of varied individuals with many characteristics, however, can give meaningful results, and those can also be called 'online'. They are, of course, not perfect, but neither are phone polls in which most people can see the incoming call comes from a polling organisation, and some people will never take the call. Or even face-to-face polls that depend on finding a variety of people in a street, when most people's lifestyle means they'd only be on a busy street on certain days at certain times.

Back in 2000, I don't know how many polls were conducted online by professional pollsters. The video game critic who wrote that does mention, and dismiss, the Harris online polls. But the penetration of the internet has changed since 2000, and so the claim that white 18-to-25 year old internet users can't represent the nation's white 18-to-25 year old people in general just doesn't really apply now. For, say, those over 75, it may still be a valid concern.

His complaint that "questions and answers are always given in the same order" in an online poll is bizarre. Even in 2000, it was far easier to mix the order of questions in online polls than ones involving a human reading out choices. And a video game critic really ought to have known that.

[cascadiance]

20. Yes, and I could double how my opinion counts in some of these by going through two email addresses.

And yes, the sampling of professional pollsters is better than online polls. But even there, there is likely a bias too over time, with the polling of the past through landlines meaning less today when many don't have landline numbers any more, and people's cell phones are less geographically tied the way other landlines are.

And as noted, most of the polling now is still name recognition, much like it was in earlier sampling of the 2008 election where the early polling, which though perhaps accurate in the time slice they were taken, weren't ultimately accurate in predicting the election results too.

[Godhumor]

21. His article is specifically about the clicky clicky webpage polls

Not the internet based polling outfits we see today.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. Except for the dismissal of Harris as using a method he thought stopped in 1948

which is still the basis of polls, telephone and internet-based, today.

[Hortensis]

35. Godhumor, thanks for discussing this stuff. I appreciate your info.

[Egnever]

23. The internet was a much different beast in 2000

Posting an article from then is proof of nothing. There was no twitter or Facebook in 2000 as just one example of the change since then. Not to mention the percentage change in the population with internet access.

Hell there weren't even smartphones in 2000.

[DCBob]

26. Amazing this needs to be explained to a group like DU.

[Fawke Em]

27. Apparently, Hillary supporters don't want to address the focus groups,

the donations, the Google searches and the social media followers/buzz because that is rather scientific in that it can be solidly counted.

But, go ahead and rail against the one item in that bunch that isn't necessarily scientific.

Oh - and continue to believe the same pundit class that was wrong about 2008.

[Hortensis]

34. Fawke Em, at a bunch of elections I can remember, many, many people

who'd been watching polls, focus groups, yadayada, turn out to be totally shocked and depressed by the results. My observation here is that most people busily watching this stuff are actually picking and choosing whatever's on the web to tell them what they want to believe. If they like it, they post it here so their buddies can agree it's valid. If they don't, they post it here so everyone can trash it. "Scientific method" at work.

May all your polls be pleasing,
Hortensis

[StrongBad]

29. I tried but my post got alerted and deleted

Apparently science and math are triggering to Bernie supporters.

[Capt. Obvious]

33. You could at least be honest with your complaint and post the jury results.

AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Results of your Jury Service

On Wed Oct 14, 2015, 02:45 PM an alert was sent on the following post:

Re: Internet polls, Bernie supporters sound like Alex Jones nutters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251680515

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

This is a continuation of another thread he started where he continued to get increasingly mean spirited and insulting and culminated in him comparing Bernie supporters to Alex Jones.

Now he's taken his bitter post(s) from that thread and made a new OP just to troll Sanders supporters. If you are that confident in your candidate's position in the race, then act like it and stop this bullshit.

People feeding these attention seeking trolls doesn't help either.

JURY RESULTS

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Wed Oct 14, 2015, 02:59 PM, and voted 7-0 to HIDE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: FINALLY! An alerter describes what the problem is. I started with "leave it" but thanks to an alerter who took the time to explain the reason and not just assume every juror knows every thread I am changing mid-stream to hide. I didn't like the OP but didn't see it as over the top until the alerter explained why it was.
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Your first OP here http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251677542 about this didn't get enough recs, so you decided to jazz it up by comparing Sanders' supporters to Alex Jones' fanbase? After almost 1900 posts, you should know better. Shame on you!
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

[StrongBad]

36. Nothing in my post was untrue

Bernie internet poll pushers used the same arguments that Alex Jones nuts used when their preferred candidate overwhelmingly won internet straw polls post debate. I posted a link confirming that. I also cited a lot of post-debate internet polls showing Ron Paul gaining up to 45% of the vote post debate then pointed out that he rarely got 8-10% in the actual primaries.

I then reiterated the iron statistical laws concerning representative samples and proper polling, but the result was the collective reaction of fingers in the ears.

The truth is that they were upset that I was so conclusively exposing their mathematical ignorance, and just used the jury as a silencing tool.

[Capt. Obvious]

38. Your post was hidden 7-0

There's a reason for that.

And you so conclusively failed to pick up on it.

[StrongBad]

39. Yeah, groupthink is a thing.

[Capt. Obvious]

40. So is being belligerent

[ColesCountyDem]

41. It was alerted and hidden because you compared Sanders' supporters to Alex Jones' fanbase.

It was not hidden because "Apparently science and math are triggering to Bernie supporters." .