Poll giving Kerry lead stirs controversy

[JoFerret]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1309994,00.html

Contradictory figures raise questions over reliability

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday September 22, 2004
The Guardian

A poll in 20 swing states published yesterday showed John Kerry still clinging to a narrow lead over President George Bush in the key election battlegrounds, but it raised questions about the reliability of such polls at a volatile point in the campaign.
While some other surveys have shown the election as a tight race, a string of recent polls has given the president a double-digit lead, provoking controversy about the various techniques used by the survey groups.

Yesterday's poll by Zogby International suggested that although Mr Kerry was losing ground, his support was better distributed in the battleground states, giving him a potential edge in the electoral college, which reflects the way each state votes and ultimately selects the president.

If the election was held today, according to Zogby, Mr Kerry would have 264 votes in the electoral college (six short of the number needed to win), and the president would have 241 votes

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[Kahuna]

1. Tee hee hee..

:7

[trueblew]

2. Worst one term-er ever!

[UpInArms]

3. good grief!

Controversy because Kerry leads in a poll?

What in the world is going on here??????

[LisaL]

6. Yep.

Haven't you heard, repukes were even protesting some newspaper that had a poll which showed Kerry ahead.
How despicable is that?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. Yep. In Minneapolis

the Star-Tribune printed a poll showing Kerry 9 points ahead. About 40 freepers protested in front of the newspaper's offices yesterday because a poll showing Kerry ahead (in Minnesota!) couldn't possibly be correct. They just couldn't stand it...

[Zero Gravitas]

16. How pathetic

What are they going to do when Kerry wins I wonder...

[Furity]

18. We probably don't want to know

I'm sure it will be ghastly.

~Furity

[The Backlash Cometh]

25. I hope somebody took video of those 40 because I bet they

didn't even live in Minnesota.

[Kierkegaard]

15. Yeah, but when Scrub leads by 13 in Newsweak/Slime

there is no controversy. Nice double standard, but par for the course. Sheesh...

[truthisfreedom]

4. c'mon people, don't be mean! he's our president, after all! sheesh!

give the guy a break! try being president with an IQ of... what was it? 70?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

[Mr_Spock]

5. He thinks his IQ is related to the number of people he kills.

lol

[clydefrand]

8. Not an IQ of 70

I've taught kids with IQ's of 70 and G.W. Bush is not one of them!!!!!!!!!! Far less...

[Career Prole]

10. 70 if the earbud radio reception is good in the testing room.

72 if Uncle Dick holds the pencil.

[sofa king]

26. Like a Citizen Kane headline, and a humorous IQ story.

"Bush Elected," or "Fraud at Polls"

But that's not what I wanted to mention. I know a guy who has actually had some military training on psychological operations and IQ estimation. While IQ is usually a bullshit figure with little application to the real world, it does have some direct application to the winning of hearts and minds.

If you're trying to win the allegiance of a local populace, high IQ people need to be approached in a very different way than low IQ people. This apparently needs to be done regardless of educational background. High IQ people have an innate ability to sift facts and come to accurate conclusions, while even educated below average people generally can't do that as well (and thus are more easily manipulated, because they can be "fed" conclusions that they think they've arrived at themselves).

Smart people "think" their way to an opinion. Daft people "feel" they know the right answers--and those feelings can be introduced by an outside source without the knowledge of the subject.

According to this guy, in psychological operations it's both necessary and pretty easy to guess someone's IQ within +/- 8 points or so. His quick-and-dirty estimates: Clinton was a true friggin' genius; Bush the Elder was only slightly above average; Shrub is probably dead-on average with an asterisk*; oddly enough, this guy thinks Reagan had a higher IQ than both of the Bushes.

*Shrub gets an asterisk on the IQ scale because he's got so much psychological baggage that it's difficult to estimate his effective IQ. He may have hard-wired language problems. He may be a dry drunk. He may be a cocaine addict with resulting addictive thought re-pattering. He's got a Norman Bates-like relationship with his Mom and a penchant for rebelling against the wisdom of his father, whose (potentially negative) influence is highly relevant since he was a President, too.

This guy's conclusion was hilarious. Shrub has lots of potential negative adjustments, virtually no positive ones. That means he may be effectively even stupider than he actually appears. He may not be able to apply his impressive-on-paper education, and even repetitive daily briefings may go in one ear and out the other.

According to this guy, Shrub is almost certainly fed conclusions from his smarter underlings, just like an SAS operative leads the dimmer bulbs in a village toward liking whomever the British support and disliking British enemies.

(That puts Tony Blair's unusual cozying up to this ideologically distinct President in a very different light, doesn't it? Blair might be keeping a hand in the game just so that if things get totally out of control he has one last chance to avert the path of the President by emotional appeal and proven loyalty, rather than any honest intellectual reasons.)

The implications are, of course, frightening. Unlike President Clinton, who knew off the top that his advisors had personal motives for their advice and could accurately isolate those motives from the facts, this President is effectively controlled by a coterie of unelected people with a private agenda. Maybe Vulcans really are running the show.

Silly as that fellow's half-drunk musings may sound, I think they have a stunning correlation with the actualy observable evidence. I guess that's how urban legends are formed.

[sonicx]

7. WTF?

Zogby is an accurate pollster! Why aren't people doing stores about Time, Gallup, and Newsweek repuke-stacked polls? :grr:

[Daisey Mae]

9. Can't say I'll miss Monkey boy.....Hello President Kerry

[trogdor]

23. Now Clinton...him I miss.

Terribly. From 1/20/01. The man was awesome. Few people can get fucked with the way Bill was and still do his job - and do it reasonably well. History will remember him well, not like Monkeyboy.

[wicket]

12. I've ALWAYS trusted Zogby

Never had a reason not to trust him, I think this poll is accurate.

[JoFerret]

14. But...where has it been published?

.

[wicket]

17. Thanks to DUer Nicolas J for this link:

http://www.washingtondispatch.com/page2/archives/000591.html

[annabanana]

13. a Kerry lead is "controversial"?...........this has GOT TO STOP

If you see this preposterous implication ANYWHERE you must counter it immediately in the strongest possible terms....This slant is UNACCEPTABLE!

[Ediacara]

19. Wait a minute....

Wasn't the Guardian the paper that ran with the bullshit fake exit polls showing Chavez going down in flames?

Honestly, they go into Zogby's argument a little bit, that party affiliation changes GLACIALLY, but miss two big points:

1) Dems are mad as hell.

2) New voter registration is tremendous and seems to be heavily in favor of dems.

If anything, I think Zogby is underrepresenting Kerry's numbers.

And seriously, it's not as though the Time/Newsweek/Gallup guys had a slightly off party profile, they had a HUGELY off party profile.

40% of the likely electorate is Republican while only 32% are Democrats? Give me a fucking break!

[BootinUp]

20. Kerry losing ground, losing gorund, losing ground, losing ground

Kerry in negative numbers now.


What a laugh.

[unfrigginreal]

21. Kerry lead? Oh we can't have that

Gallup is polling as we speak.

[colonel odis]

22. the rethugs will do their dirtiest work on election day.

at the other kind of polls.

that's why we need people at polling places to make sure voters aren't intimidated.

[trapper914]

24. My wish: No Polls

Too many of the sheeple are bandwagon-jumping idiots. They'll watch the polls and vote on who they perceive as the leader. These are the same people who have Packers, then Broncos, then Rams, then Patriots football jerseys in their closets.

[UnapologeticLiberal]

27. Of course, polls showing Bush leading are not usually questioned

It is not until a poll shows Kerry up that all of a sudden all the polls are called into doubt.

My boyfriend said something about how Gallup weighted the Republican respondents more, so that 60 something percent of respondents in one poll had voted for Bush in 2000. Does anyone know anything about that?

[BlueNomad]

28. Ha ha. And don't forget

....the 1,0000000000000000000000000000000,000000000000000000000000,00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000,000000000000000000000000,00000000000

newly registered voters who are going to vote predominately for Senator Kerry. LOL