i like how this ^ guy still doesnt even know whats being argued

btw fox news' poll was also scientiic...prove it wasnt

10/4/2008 11:02:20 AM

First of all...I don't have a candidate, if I do, it's probably Barr....but that's besides the point.

If the CNN poll was 'random' as you claim....(how you know their methodology I have no idea) then so was the Fox poll......so how do you explain the 2 vastly different results?


Look...as I explained earlier, these polls can actually have an effect on the voting come election day...

However, it is clear that the vast majority of you are going to argue the opposite of what I am arguing because you've made the assumption that I am voting for McCain.

I spent a lot of my college career researching persuasion, argumentation and communication theories but because I'm not sucking Obama's dick, I must be wrong about everything.

10/4/2008 12:30:38 PM

Would somebody post links to the two polls in question?

As far as I know, a randomly selected poll by FOX had Biden winning the debate handily.

10/4/2008 12:41:17 PM

I think they're referring to a Fox web poll.

They seem to not know the difference

Oh, never mind: the scientific Fox polls says Biden won, too:

Quote :

"Survey USA Biden 51% Palin 32% Undecided 17% MediaCurves.com tracked independent voters, showing them breaking to Biden 67% to Palin 33%. Original report: Random and non-random polls for the vice presidential debate declare Biden the winner over Palin in the vice-presidential debate. Non-random (unscientific) polls on AOL and MSNBC web sites show Biden winning 48 to 45 and 78.6 to 18.9 respectively. Randomly selected subjects on three other polls also show Biden winning: CNN/Opinion Research Biden 51 Palin 36 CBS Biden 46 Palin 21 Fox Biden 61 Palin 39 In the CBS poll, of the uncommitted voters, 18% now say they will vote Obama/Biden, 10% now say McCain/Palin."

http://voices.kansascity.com/node/2299


But, I mean, this is only if you buy into the whole "math" thing, even when there's so much debate going on within the Mathematics community.

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 1:23 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2008 1:18:09 PM

Well I don't know what the rest of 'they're' was referring to but I'm referring to whatever polls they were citing during/after the debate on all the networks. It doesn't really matter though because each network has their own agenda whether or not they or anyone else wants to admit it.

This is all moot though because no one here is going to win this argument. No one.

10/4/2008 1:25:00 PM

You just claimed Fox had a conservative bias, and will manipulate their polls towards Palin.

Yet even their poll shows Biden won.

So... really? This argument's not winnable? It seems very clear cut to me.

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 1:29 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2008 1:28:55 PM

imo palin won for saying doggonit lol

10/4/2008 1:33:31 PM

Well that's not the poll I'm talking about then.....if indeed there was a poll conducted by FOX that produced those results, then perhaps FOX isn't as bias as everyone seems to think




This argument is not winnable. Especially since most people on here have blinders on...and I realize that so do most people in this country. This election, more than any other one I can remember...and maybe it's because I'm older, but this election has caused screaming matches within my own family to the point of tears and doors being slammed.

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 1:50 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2008 1:47:47 PM

Or perhaps they simply hired a firm to run a scientific poll just like all the other networks did, and got similar results.

i.e., according to the majority of people, Biden won.

Quote :

"This argument is not winnable. Especially since most people on here have blinders on"

Who's the one with the blinders on, here? Look at the polls and admit you're wrong.

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 1:52 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2008 1:51:26 PM

Except that I'm arguing about the validity of polls to begin with. All polls. Not just this one.

10/4/2008 2:03:15 PM

And why is that?

Would you be arguing against a time-tested scientific discipline if Palin had won?

10/4/2008 2:05:07 PM

Absolutely. This particular argument started with the idea that 611 people are representative of our entire country.

10/4/2008 2:07:50 PM

It's been demonstrated time after time that that sample size can.

But hey, it sounds off to the layperson, so let's have a discussion among people who have no idea what they're talking about.

And let's not forget that three separate scientific polls yielded very similar results.

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 2:14 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2008 2:13:32 PM

Quote :

"Except that I'm arguing about the validity of polls to begin with. All polls. Not just this one."

Based on your years of graduate level study in statistics, right?

10/4/2008 2:15:05 PM

Well I majored in Communication. A big part of our curriculum was argumentation, persuasion and communication theories including the use of and methods of, collecting data from polls. There's a good chance that these polls indeed produced those results. It's the methods used to get those results that is the main variable. It's not a mathematical question that I'm arguing and I already explained that. It's the methods used. Politics is one of the, if not, THE most difficult polls to conduct and get accurate results for due to how many factors go into getting a fair sampling and how emotional the topic is. Unless the entire United States phone book was loaded into a database and at random, 611 numbers were picked and called, then making a general statement and conclusion about the views of all is flawed, wrong, unreliable and misleading.


There also exists a self-fulfilling prophecy but arguing these things is going around in circles. In my many years of studying communication theories, I learned that since most arguments are not sound and make extensive use of fallacies, this argument, like most here on TWW are not going to persuade anyone of anything or change anyone's mind.

10/4/2008 2:31:42 PM

Quote :

"Well I majored in Communication."

Case closed.

This argument's gone on long enough and now the story's changing.

10/4/2008 2:54:34 PM

Quote :

" It's not a mathematical question that I'm arguing and I already explained that. "

That's what you don't understand. It IS a mathematical question you're arguing. If you don't think the sample size was random enough, there's math to prove that.

If you think the sample size was too small, there's math to show that too. Haven't you noticed that they usually say +/- 5% error and things like that in the fine print? They don't pull those numbers from their ass.

It's possible that a single poll might be wrong, but this is usually a fluke. It's extremely, extremely unlikely that multiple polls can be wrong, if they are conducted properly (and there's actually math to give you a specific number of HOW unlikely).

It's a joke that you admit you don't have a strong math background, and you didn't say you've ever taken a statistics class, yet you somehow feel you're qualified to assert most polling is wrong... ha!

This is one of the actual texts for a stats class at NCSU: http://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Guide-Statistics-Larry-Gonick/dp/0062731025

I recommend picking that up, it's fairly easy to read, and it covers everything you need to know to get what sampling is and how polls work.

10/4/2008 3:13:08 PM

I don't understand where the disconnect is here.... You are saying that the reliability of statistics when dealing with poker in a casino, is equal to the reliability of statistics of a political poll conducted?

10/4/2008 4:06:47 PM

P-values, for the win.

10/4/2008 4:16:59 PM

haha m2c with the statistics fail

10/4/2008 4:42:18 PM

Quote :

"You are saying that the reliability of statistics when dealing with poker in a casino, is equal to the reliability of statistics of a political poll conducted?"

Poker is more reliable because it doesn't really have "margin of errors" in the same sense that political polls due. But in poker, you have much more uncertainty (but it's a calculable uncertainty). The 2 topics are only tenuously related though. They're different kinds of problems.

In political polls, the results from a sample converges to the results as if you actually polled the entire population, and how close you get in this convergence is purely a matter of how large your sample is. The "trick" in this method though is that since it's an exponential (or power... I can't remember which, but the concept is the same) relationship rather than a linear one, there is a point of diminishing return past a certain sample size. What this means is that lets say you poll 600 people, your result might give you a margin of error of 4 points, which means that the actual result would be within 4 points of if you polled the entire population. But lets say you wanted to reduce that margin of error by half, if it were a linear relationship, you would think you'd have to poll 1200 people, but since it's NOT linear, you actually have to poll closer to about 2000 people. You're polling more than 3x as many people to get a result that's barely much better than what you had.

Also of note is that I used real numbers there for a population of 300,000,000 people. So yes, polling 600 or so people gives you a 90% confidence level with a margin of error of around +/- 3%.

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 4:52 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2008 4:50:16 PM

um...ok. I'm going to add one more thing here because this is getting more and more pointless....but there are so many variables that need to be taken into consideration when conducting a poll...that in order to properly interpret poll results, you would have to know every single variable and I promise you, that none of these polls tell you half of it. I mean the way in which a question is worded is a HUGE variable. So is the confidence interval which HAS TO BE KNOWN in order to make sense of the margin of error.....


I'm not implying that these pollsters are lying. I am implying that to take their results, allowing them to interpret the data as opposed to giving us all of the variables and allowing us to interpret it ourselves, is inherently unreliable.

10/4/2008 4:55:10 PM

Quote :

"I'm not implying that these pollsters are lying. I am implying that to take their results, allowing them to interpret the data as opposed to giving us all of the variables and allowing us to interpret it ourselves, is inherently unreliable."

haha, most polls online have links to the raw data. Interpret to your heart's content.

Polls aren't meant to give you a complete picture anyway, that's why they're polls. They're a heuristic mechanism to gauge the flow of things.

Will you vote for A or B is a very pollable data. Are you voting for A or B because of X is a less poll-able (which is why the polls of Iraqis are often very mixed).

10/4/2008 5:51:29 PM

mind if i ask what yall are debating about?

heres what i know so far:

palin and biden had a debate...apparently my2cents is saying the polls are messed up? and moron and a few others are saying they are accurate?

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 5:53 PM. Reason : trying to figure out whats going on...]

10/4/2008 5:52:26 PM

http://www.pollster.com/

10/4/2008 5:55:41 PM

^damn... idaho REALLY does not like obama

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 6:03 PM. Reason : jesus christ washington, dc is freaking liberal as fuck]

10/4/2008 6:02:55 PM

Palin's State of the Union.

http://presidentpalin.ytmnd.com/

10/4/2008 6:07:01 PM

Quote :

"Unless the entire United States phone book was loaded into a database and at random, 611 numbers were picked and called,"

That's the basic idea, yeah.

10/4/2008 6:29:04 PM

I'm saying that taking poll results of a few and assigning those numbers to the whole especially when it comes to politics is pointless....unless of course you are using the poll to achieve a goal...and the goal for instance is to insure confidence in one candidate vs another....On that CNN poll that asked 611 people...I went and looked and here are a couple things that I immediately noticed:

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Oct. 2, 2008. N=611 adults nationwide who watched the vice presidential debate. MoE ± 4. Per CNN: "Survey respondents were first interviewed as part of a random national sample on September 30 through October 1, 2008. In those interviews, respondents indicated they planned to watch tonight's debate and were willing to be re-interviewed after the debate. . . . 31% of the respondents who participated in tonight's survey identified themselves as Republicans, 37% identified themselves as Democrats, and 31% identified themselves as independents.".

First of all, I see that people were called during the day. So who answers the phone during the day? Stay at home moms? The unemployed? How is that representative. And of course I have to make assumptions because they don't say. Then you have 37% democrats vs 31% republicans so right there Palin is automatically going to take a hit regardless.

Second, I also don't see a confidence interval number anywhere...which means that MoE is useless.


You guys seem to think that I'm saying that Palin did better than Biden even though this poll says otherwise. I am not.

As with everything else, statistics are used to serve a purpose. Statistics are manipulated all the time.

This goes for politics and most everything else. Do you think that if Colgate hires a poll co to survey the average american household about whether they like Colgate more than Crest....and the poll says that Crest is favored, do you think Colgate is ever going to let that poll see the light of day? Of course not...and eventually one of the polls this company will do will yield more favorable results for Colgate and that's the poll they'll use to tell you how great their product is.

10/4/2008 6:44:28 PM

OMG OBAMA RUNS WITH TERRORIST!!!!! OMG! OMG!


Poor Sarah, she is ruining any future in national politics with this stuff.......

10/4/2008 6:52:16 PM

Quote :

"Second, I also don't see a confidence interval number anywhere...which means that MoE is useless."

Uh, the confidence interval can be easily derived from the margin of error. Do you mean confidence level? That's typically 95%.

10/4/2008 6:57:19 PM

^^^ First, as GV noted, the confidence interval IS the margin of error.
Second, where does it say they were called during the day?

And finally, there are various ways to process the data to account for sample bias (which is what you are describing). That's why CNN hired http://www.opinionresearch.com/ to do the polling. I'd bet that they actually have people with PhDs in statistics that have studied these issues, and have determined their effect on the results.

You really don't have enough information or knowledge to really say that this poll, and all polls are wrong. You're right polls can be manipulated to show one thing, but if that thing is "will you vote for A," the manipulation would have to be subtle.

And when multiple polls from multiple different organizations, with slightly different methodologies agree with each other, then the data is likely accurate.

10/5/2008 2:24:18 AM

You can prove anything with statistics. Forfteen percent of people know that.

10/5/2008 9:45:20 AM

Quote :

"This is all moot though because no one here is going to win this argument. No one."

I have won this argument, assuming that you cannot move your King out of check.

Your argument is that all polls like the ones mentioned are mathematically invalid. However, you have failed to prove it yet.

It's still your move.

10/5/2008 10:39:58 AM

this is worth sharing here too
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/vp-debate-open-palin-biden/727421/

10/5/2008 11:06:32 AM

Evidence, Holla Back.

10/5/2008 11:10:56 AM

just to get an idea of how desperate the mccaia/palin ticket is, here's a nice fact check on the obama/ayers relationship

Quote :

"Fact Check: Is Obama 'palling around with terrorists'? Posted: 09:00 AM ET Gov. Palin commented about Sen. Obama and William Ayers at a rally in Carson, California Saturday. The Statement: Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday, October 4, that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." Get the facts! The Facts: In making the charge at a fund-raising event in Englewood, Colorado, and a rally in Carson, California, Palin was referring at least in part to William Ayers, a 1960s radical. In both appearances, Palin cited a front-page article in Saturday's New York Times detailing the working relationship between Obama and Ayers. In the 1960s, Ayers was a founding member of the radical Weather Underground group that carried out a string of bombings of federal buildings, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, in protest against the Vietnam War. The now-defunct group was labeled a "domestic terrorist group" by the FBI, and Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn — also a Weather Underground member — spent 10 years as fugitives in the 1970s. Federal charges against them were dropped due to FBI misconduct in gathering evidence against them, and they resurfaced in 1980. Both Ayers and Dohrn ultimately became university professors in Chicago, with Ayers, 63, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Obama's Chicago home is in the same neighborhood where Ayers and Dohrn live. Beginning in 1995, Ayers and Obama worked with the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge on a huge school improvement project. The Annenberg Challenge was for cities to compete for $50 million grants to improve public education. Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, and Obama was recruited onto the board. Also from 1999 through 2001 both were board members on the Woods Fund, a charitable foundation that gave money to various causes, including the Trinity United Church that Obama attended and Northwestern University Law Schools' Children and Family Justice Center, where Dohrn worked. CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved. Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told CNN that after meeting Obama through the Annenberg project, Ayers hosted a campaign event for him that same year when then-Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced the young community organizer as her chosen successor. LaBolt also said the two have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood. The extent of Obama's relationship with Ayers came up during the Democratic presidential primaries earlier this year, and Obama explained it by saying, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood … the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago — when I was 8 years old — somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense." The New York Times article cited by Palin concluded that "the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers." Other publications, including the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have said that their reporting doesn't support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship. The McCain campaign did not respond Saturday to a request for elaboration on Palin's use of the plural "terrorists." Verdict: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are. "

well played palin

10/5/2008 11:36:52 AM

Quote :

"Verdict: False. There is no indication that..."

Quite obviously she wasn't attempting to show the veracity of her claim, instead her goal was trying to get to those who read or hear only headline news, who will hear Obama's name in the same sentence as the word terrorists, to associate the two in a fear-mongering and deceptive way.

Its about as bad as McCain trying to spin Obama's support for stranger danger education as full blown sex ed for kindergartners.

10/5/2008 11:43:04 AM

Quote :

"instead her goal was trying to get to those who read or hear only headline news, who will hear Obama's name in the same sentence as the word terrorists, to associate the two in a fear-mongering and deceptive way."

indeed, and unfortunately there are plenty of people out there who will eat that shit up without ever bothering to read something like that^^

10/5/2008 11:48:37 AM

what's wrong with lying to people in order to get the most trustworthy candidate in office?

10/5/2008 11:51:02 AM

HE'S PALLING AROUND WITH TERRORISTS, MARKO.

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?

10/5/2008 12:16:22 PM

Until now, I was only like "Haha, she is too stupid, or too much of a lay person". But now, after hearing her on TV accusing Obama of what she accused him of, and then reading that article that jwb9984 posted, I thoroughly despise her for her malicious and willful deception and corruption. The VERY article she cited in her speech, concludes the OPPOSITE of what she said. How lowly of her.

May God's wrath be on her.

10/5/2008 5:37:42 PM

Is Palin really anti-choice?

Every time she gets asked the question, she continuously reiterates the statement that she would "choose life" which is actually a pro-choice mantra, because it implies choice.

Where exactly has Palin stated she is not pro-choice? Her other position is that it should be "up to the states" which is not explicitly an anti-choice position.

And also considering she once lukewarmly acknowledged Alaska's potential support for Obama, I can't see her being all that religious nut-joby as she's being made out to be.

10/5/2008 11:38:42 PM

Quote :

"Now, foundationally, it's no secret that I'm pro-life that I believe in a culture of life is very important for this country. Personally that's what I would like to see further embraced by America. "

Quote :

"I'm pro-life. I'll do all I can to see every baby is created with a future and potential. The legislature should do all it can to protect human life."

Quote :

"I am pro-life. With the exception of a doctor’s determination that the mother’s life would end if the pregnancy continued. I believe that no matter what mistakes we make as a society, we cannot condone ending an innocent’s life."

10/6/2008 12:49:47 AM

Quote :

"This election, more than any other one I can remember...and maybe it's because I'm older, but this election has caused screaming matches within my own family to the point of tears and doors being slammed."

This is ludicrous. Nobody in your family is going to sway the election in either direction. Nobody in your family will so much as make a dent, even, or an observable difference.

Why the hell would your family argue and scream at each other to the point of tears over an issue they have epsilon control over?

10/6/2008 2:23:04 AM

Family is the one of the most powerful and prolific sources of brainwashing. Many people see the rejection of their ideas as a rejection of themselves and thus feel particularly betrayed and insulted when a close family member refuses to accept the rightness of their conclusions. Though not always intentional, this creates a system where family members are subjected to negative reinforcement when their beliefs and opinions differ significantly from one another. Depending on the unit's dynamics, the source of this negative reinforcement can be from the majority and directed towards a dissenter, from a dominant figure and directed towards the other members, or competitive and coming from multiple disagreeing members.

The result is often a coercive punishment mechanism that brings strays into line or forces them into a form of emotional and/or physical exile. When agreement is reached, or at least submission, then cognitive dissonance and subtle insistence work to maintain the victorious view point as the family's reality.

Anyways, this mechanism doesn't always come into play. It does explain your screaming matches though. It's the conflict between the desire to belong and to harmonize with the family and the cognitive dissonance that results when an idea held as true is challenged.

10/6/2008 2:43:29 AM

Quote :

"Her other position is that it should be "up to the states" which is not explicitly an anti-choice position."

It is explicitly anti-choice. Choice doesn't mean choice for those who are fortunate enough to live in a state where it's legal. Choice means choice for all women. That's what Roe v. Wade is all about. And anything less is anti-choice.

[Edited on October 6, 2008 at 4:25 AM. Reason : Better.]

10/6/2008 4:21:26 AM

Quote :

"Every time she gets asked the question, she continuously reiterates the statement that she would "choose life" which is actually a pro-choice mantra, because it implies choice."

This is coded language, simply to make herself seem more palatable across the spectrum. The fact that she would "choose life" really means nothing as far as the existing laws are concerned, because either choice is legal. By framing it as "i choose life", she is trying to not upset pro-choice people by making it sound like she really is all about choice, and at the same time not offending pro-life people by making the same decision they would make. But as The Daily Show has pointed out many times, she is all about "choosing life" for herself and her daughter, but she wants to take that choice away from other women.

Quote :

"Where exactly has Palin stated she is not pro-choice? Her other position is that it should be "up to the states" which is not explicitly an anti-choice position."

again, this is code for "overturn Roe v. Wade," since abortion is currently legal under federal law. The only the States could decide on their own would be if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. This is a tactic akin to the Discovery Institute's tactics on Intelligent Design - just take it one, seemingly innocuous step at a time. You can be damned sure that if Roe v. Wade was overturned and it really was left to a State decision, that the anti-abortion tactic would then switch completely from "states rights" to "each state must ban it"

10/6/2008 7:57:13 AM

biggest difference I have with Palin and the typical conservatives is on abortions


I don't know what the solution is because everybody can agree there should be less of them, regardless of if you're super pro-life or pro-choice. People that have one just to avoid responsibility and accountability should be treated completely different than the necessity of abortions in cases like rape and the potential for death during birth. That's pretty much impossible though, so I'm not on the same side as the "moonbat Christian right" as everybody here likes to commonly refer to religious people.

10/6/2008 8:50:21 AM

here it is embedded:

10/6/2008 9:17:28 AM