IT MATTERS FOLKS WHERE WE GET THESE POLLING NUMBERS AND NOW THAT WE HAVE A WHOLESALE DISREGARD TO OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY BOTH NATIONALLY AS WELL AS STATE AND LOCAL DATA......WE NEED TO MOVE AWAY FROM RELYING ON THESE POLLING DATA. THE POLLING CORPORATIONS ARE NOW OPERATING JUST AS THE WALL STREET RATING AGENCIES S & P AND MOODY'S......
THEY GIVE THE RESULTS THE 1% WANT TO SEE!
Do your own research and vote by that------do not be sheeple!!!!
This is a top election issue .....if your politician or justice organizations are not shouting that the integrity of polling especially for elections and political issues is now propaganda and not scientific polling......THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!
Regarding the loss of integrity in US stats and polls:
By now everyone knows the poverty data Basu gave are not real.....but it is important to look at why he gives these stats and how this embracing of propaganda in US media affects world opinion.
Below we see why he is doing it. First, it keeps citizens from knowing the reality of the severity of conditions and second to keep protests at bay and second, it reflects the attitude of the 1% that people falling into poverty no longer count---LITERALLY!
The goal of the last few decades was moving US wealth to the top and creating a level of poverty in the US that mirrors third world countries. This is how 5% of a population keeps the other 95% suppressed----poverty. 80% is getting to that goal....just wait for the massive crash of the economy next year. That will do it!
ALL THAT NEED BE DONE IS TO RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES AGAINST NEO-LIBERALS TO REVERSE THIS-----REINSTATING RULE OF LAW TO RECOVER MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED!
When this article says 80% are near poverty.....we know that with a Living Wage at $15 an hour and poverty stats by US use 1960s cost of living to tally its figures.
*************************
In the U.S. 49.7 Million Are Now Poor, and 80% of the Total Population Is Near Poverty
Posted by PBSpot Admin 06 November 2013
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
_________________________________________________
More interesting on corporate NPR was the report of US exporting its polling around the world with Gallup trying to get into the Afghanistan elections. LOL!!!! Gallup was shown to have released skewed data and polls in our US elections so we hear people around the world shouting RUN FROM US DATA AND POLLING!
I showed you the Gallup poll that had Obama and Hillary as the most admired in the US.....winning with just over 1,000 polled. We all know a cohort this size with a 4% error is absolutely useless and yet it made every mainstream news media in the US. No doubt they did this because they could only find 1,000 people in the US to say they admired Obama and Hillary or they simply polled the White House staff. We have the same in Maryland as Gonzales and other agencies used for polling always seems to poll support for the governor's policies with a cohort of a few hundred.....again, probably the State House staff.
Raise your hands if you understand that sampling 403 Maryland citizens out of .......Maryland voter registration has 1,944,620 are registered as Democrats in 2010.......MEANS NOTHING! EVERYONE.
Raise your hands if you know 3-5% margin of error means not statistically valid!!!!!!!! EVERYONE.
Below you see the Maryland polling agency used the most and all of Maryland media repeat whatever is said. Finding 400 democratic voters in Maryland who say they still have faith in Obama's performance.....who still believe the statistics put forward by O'Malley making him look like he did a good job.....and now want his protege Brown to win.....YES, IT LOOKS LIKE THE COHORT CAME FROM THE STATE HOUSE!
As a scientist I understand means testing and know that the margin of error needs to be extremely low to be acceptable for scientific research. We do not need to be that low in these societal pollings, but we do know that once you go above 3% you lose any reliability in data.
Comparing percentages
In a plurality voting system, where the winner is the candidate with the most votes, it is important to know who is ahead.
Given the observed percentage difference p − q (2% or 0.02) and the standard error of the difference calculated above (.03), any statistical calculator may be used to calculate the probability that a sample from a normal distribution with mean 0.02 and standard deviation 0.03 is greater than 0.
Embargo: 12:01 am Thursday, October 17, 2013
Gonzales Research & Marketing Strategies, Inc.
Methodology
This survey also includes an oversampling of 403 registered Democrats who indicated they were likely to vote in the June 2014 primary election. A cross-section of interviews was conducted in each jurisdiction within the state to reflect Democratic primary election voting patterns. The margin of error on this group is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
President Barack Obama Job Approval
Among Maryland voters, 58% approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president
Statewide, 48% of voters
approve of the job O’Malley
is doing as governor
Democratic Primary
Forty percent of Maryland Democratic primary voters have a favorable opinion of Anthony
Brown
***********************************
As the interviewee stated in this report, these polls will only be used as propaganda in Afghan elections as they are now in the US. Look below to see again, Gallup is taking 1,000 polling samples within each nation polled.....1,000!!!!!!
THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW THE POLL IS ONLY ABOUT PROPAGANDA BECAUSE IT MEANS NOTHING!
Will Afghan Polling Data Help Alleviate Election Fraud?
by Sean Carberry
January 06, 2014 5:07 AM
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has commissioned a series of polls to see who Afghans favor in the April election. But between security challenges and "social desirability" biases, it can be difficult to impossible to get a clear read of the Afghan people.
*********************************
'Gallup conducts surveys in 160 countries and is committed to doing so for the entire century. The Gallup World Poll provides a scientific window into the thoughts and behaviors of 98% of the world's residents through nationally representative samples. It is the only global study of its kind in existence'.
Global Gallup Poll: US Voted Greatest Threat to World Peace
The polling agency Gallup recently asked about 1,000 people in each of 68 different countries which country they believed was the biggest threat to world peace.
**************************************
Below you see an analysis that shows how a major US polling organization, Gallup has been wrong over and again by wide margins and these sample sizes are part of the reason. More importantly is the movement of polls to being propaganda rather than true stats with integrity and honesty of reporting as the goal. You see, when the people behind them are part of the lying, cheating, stealing group....THE STATS BECOME IRRELEVANT.
MARYLAND KNOWS THAT BETTER THAN MOST STATES AS ALL DATA BY STATE IS SKEWED.
******************
Look below at my last article on reliability in research design and how polling data used to be the realm of public universities who took integrity and broad information collection seriously. Then think about what Gallup, Gonzalez and all other mainstream polling agencies are giving us. We need to go back to strong public universities working in the public interest and this includes the value of polling!
'To be clear, I would not recommend disregarding the Gallup poll. You should consider it — but in context.
The context is that its most recent results differ substantially from the dozens of other state and national polls about the campaign. It’s much more likely that Gallup is wrong and everyone else is right than the other way around'.
In National Polling, It’s Gallup vs. the Rest
By NATE SILVER
Published: October 19, 2012
The Gallup national tracking poll now shows a very strong lead for Mitt Romney. As of Friday, he was ahead by six points among likely voters, having led by seven points on Thursday.
However, the poll’s results are deeply inconsistent with the results that other polling firms are showing in the presidential race, and the Gallup poll has a history of performing very poorly when that is the case.
Other national polls now show a very slight lead for President Obama on average, while state polls continue to indicate a narrow advantage for the president in tipping-point states like Ohio. The FiveThirtyEight forecast has Mr. Obama as a modest favorite in the election largely on the basis of the state polls.
The Gallup poll is accounted for in the forecast model, along with all other state and national surveys.
There are two major pieces of information that we’re looking to extract from each poll. One is simply the raw number — who is ahead or behind? The other is the trend it shows in the race — which candidate is gaining or losing ground?
Different types of polls are relatively more or less useful for these purposes. Because national tracking polls like Gallup are published every day, they are useful for the trend part of the calculation.
There are six national tracking polls published most days. The others are from Rasmussen Reports, Ipsos, the RAND Corporation, Investors’ Business Daily and United Press International. (A seventh daily tracking poll, from Public Policy Polling, made its debut on Thursday.)
But of the daily tracking polls, the Gallup survey receives the largest weight in the model’s trendline calculation. It uses a larger sample size than most other polls, and its methodology includes calls to cellphone voters.
On the other hand, our pollster ratings are also based in part on past accuracy, and Gallup’s performance is middling in that department.
The Gallup poll seems to have an outsize influence on the subjective perception of where the presidential race stands, however — especially when the poll seems to diverge from the consensus.
This simply isn’t rational, in my view. Usually, when a poll is an outlier relative to the consensus, its results turn out badly.
You do not need to look any further than Gallup’s track record over the past few election cycles to see this.
In 2008, the Gallup poll put Mr. Obama 11 points ahead of John McCain on the eve of that November’s election. The average of the 15 or so national polls released just before the election put Mr. Obama up by about seven points.
The average did a good job; Mr. Obama won the popular vote by seven points. The Gallup poll had a four-point miss, however.
In 2010, Gallup put Republicans ahead by 15 points on the national Congressional ballot, higher than other polling firms, which put Republicans an average of 8 or 9 points ahead. In fact, Republicans won the popular vote for the House of Representatives by about seven percentage points — fairly close to the average of polls, but representing another big miss for Gallup.
The Gallup poll also has often found implausibly large swings within a race. In 2000, for example, Gallup had George W. Bush 16 points ahead of Al Gore among likely voters in polling it conducted in early August. By Sept. 20, about six weeks later, the firm had Mr. Gore up by 10 points instead: a 26-point swing over the course of a month and a half. No other polling firm showed a swing remotely that large.
Then in October 2000, Gallup showed a 14-point swing toward Mr. Bush over a few days, and had him ahead by 13 points on Oct. 27 — just 10 days before an election that ended in a virtual tie.
After the Republican convention in 2008, Gallup had Mr. McCain leading Mr. Obama by as many as 10 points among likely voters. Although some other polls also had Mr. McCain pulling ahead in the race, no other polling firm ever gave him more than a four-point lead.
It’s not clear what causes such large swings, although Gallup’s likely voter model may have something to do with it.
Even their registered voter numbers can be volatile, however. In early September of this year, after the Democratic conventions, they had Mr. Obama’s lead among registered voters going from seven points to zero points over the course of a week — and then reverting to six points just as quickly. Most other polling firms showed a roughly steady race during this time period.
Because Gallup’s polls usually take large sample sizes, statistical variance alone probably cannot account for these sorts of shifts. It seems to be an endemic issue with their methodology.
To be clear, I would not recommend disregarding the Gallup poll. You should consider it — but in context.
The context is that its most recent results differ substantially from the dozens of other state and national polls about the campaign. It’s much more likely that Gallup is wrong and everyone else is right than the other way around.
__________________________________________
What we are seeing with US polling is a direct attempt to frame all US political issues under the guise of polling. The way polling questions are asked or not asked and who is in the cohort overs the American public nothing but mis-information.
When a poll asks a general question like DO YOU SUPPORT THE IMMIGRATION BILL rather than having a question that offers categories important to the immigration policy found in that bill.....you skew the results. They know it and so do we. It is also how they kill any approach to getting all political views on an issue aired.
POLLING HAS NOW BECOME THE MEANS TO CAPTURE ALL POLITICAL TALK ON ALL ISSUES!
Polling used to be done by public universities for the most part and involved extensive attention to integrity and detail just as if it were a scientific data activity. Academics did due diligence to collecting the data needed for polling because they used those stats for public research. Now, public universities have been made into corporate branches and you see very little time placed by universities in this because it is not cost-effective! Meanwhile, the corporations allowed to dominate the polling arena now find the costs of real polling not necessary and give us these useless data collected as cheaply as possible....
THAT'S NAKED CAPITALISM FOR YOU!!!!
Reliability in Research Design
January 3, 20092By ActiveCampaign
When I think of reliability I imagine always knowing what to expect. If a person is able to produce the same quality work consistently then they are considered reliable. You see it in sports all the time. Certain players have a knack for coming through in key situations no matter how late in the season or how worn down they are. However, I can imagine few jobs that require more reliability than a surgeon. Having an off day for them could prove disastrous. For a measure to be reliable it must demonstrate consistency as well as repeatability. When carrying out research our results should be accurate across a range of measurements. In surveys you would like to think that you would get the same response no matter what mood your respondent is in but that is not always the case. A surgeon must deal with difficult situations while showing the same precision and reliability. That is a quality to be admired but you can not always expect everyone to act like a surgeon at all times. It’s also possible that your respondent won’t know what you mean when you ask them a certain question resulting in an answer that is entirely different from what you are attempting to measure.
Test-retest Reliability
If your survey respondent had to take your survey again would they answer the same questions the same way? Test-retest reliability measures reliability over time. A number of factors can affect reliability over time such as a person’s mood, time of the day, where the questions are placed in the survey (context effect), circumstantial events, vagueness, etc. A good test will take into account factors that may influence survey results over time and minimize them so that results show little variation. If a test is unreliable then any one of a number of factors can lead to varying results depending on when the question is asked. In general the more time a person takes between retesting the more variation you can expect in the responses.
If you ask Joe Q what he thinks about Candidate X on Tuesday he may view him favorably because X gave a really good speech on Monday. Say Candidate X is indited later in the week in a corruption scandal. Joe previously indicated that a candidate’s integrity is very important. Last week he said that he was leaning toward Candidate X. Now that Candidate X has been exposed you may think he is likely to give you a different response if you asked Joe the same question next Tuesday. The reliability of opinion polls can be doubtful depending on the questions we ask because opinions tend to fluctuate over time. What does Joe Q mean when he rates integrity as very important? Perhaps Joe Q considers anyone that shares his ideology to have integrity. Its possible that Joe Q would vote for Candidate X no matter what he thought of him personally because they share the same ideology. Probing Joe’s past voting record would be more indicative of voter preference than asking a subjective question about integrity. Asking him more objective questions that would not fluctuate from week to week would have higher test-retest reliability.
Parallel Forms Reliability
Another challenge reliability faces is in knowing what the best questions to ask are. What does Joe Q mean when he rates integrity as very important? Could we come up with better questions to predict how voters like Joe Q would vote? Another way to improve the reliability of a survey is to ensure that it is representative of the data you are trying to collect. To do this increase the sample size. If you are gathering research to find out whether voters like Joe Q are likely to vote for Candidate X then you need to find more people like Joe and ask them different questions or question sets based on the same construct.
You come up with a large set of questions to ask in your survey. The construct that you are measuring is voter preference. The large question set is split in half and you administer each set to half of the targeted population. You can then take a look at which questions are better indicators of voter preference. This combines what is known as a split test method with parallel form evaluation.
You can use parallel forms to measure a construct for people that are not like Joe Q. Here you would divide a population that is representative of all likely voters in two. Develop a large question set that measures a particular construct and then administer to each half of your representative population. Now you can learn which questions are better indicators for voter preference for a representative population.
Inter-rater Reliability
This is necessary if you are conducting your survey using an interview process. If multiple people are interviewing Joe Q to ask what his opinion on politics is then inter-rater reliability measures the degree to which the observers agree. This is the best way to measure reliability if you are using observation for your research.
Internal Consistency Reliability
The purpose of asking questions in surveys is to assess a particular construct or idea. Therefore different questions that measure the same construct should yield similar results. Reliability is determined on the basis of whether results are consistent for different items that measure the same construct. For example, you could check for reliability on your survey by asking a respondent two similar questions meant to measure the same thing.
THEY GIVE THE RESULTS THE 1% WANT TO SEE!
Do your own research and vote by that------do not be sheeple!!!!
This is a top election issue .....if your politician or justice organizations are not shouting that the integrity of polling especially for elections and political issues is now propaganda and not scientific polling......THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!
Regarding the loss of integrity in US stats and polls:
By now everyone knows the poverty data Basu gave are not real.....but it is important to look at why he gives these stats and how this embracing of propaganda in US media affects world opinion.
Below we see why he is doing it. First, it keeps citizens from knowing the reality of the severity of conditions and second to keep protests at bay and second, it reflects the attitude of the 1% that people falling into poverty no longer count---LITERALLY!
The goal of the last few decades was moving US wealth to the top and creating a level of poverty in the US that mirrors third world countries. This is how 5% of a population keeps the other 95% suppressed----poverty. 80% is getting to that goal....just wait for the massive crash of the economy next year. That will do it!
ALL THAT NEED BE DONE IS TO RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES AGAINST NEO-LIBERALS TO REVERSE THIS-----REINSTATING RULE OF LAW TO RECOVER MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED!
When this article says 80% are near poverty.....we know that with a Living Wage at $15 an hour and poverty stats by US use 1960s cost of living to tally its figures.
*************************
In the U.S. 49.7 Million Are Now Poor, and 80% of the Total Population Is Near Poverty
Posted by PBSpot Admin 06 November 2013
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
_________________________________________________
More interesting on corporate NPR was the report of US exporting its polling around the world with Gallup trying to get into the Afghanistan elections. LOL!!!! Gallup was shown to have released skewed data and polls in our US elections so we hear people around the world shouting RUN FROM US DATA AND POLLING!
I showed you the Gallup poll that had Obama and Hillary as the most admired in the US.....winning with just over 1,000 polled. We all know a cohort this size with a 4% error is absolutely useless and yet it made every mainstream news media in the US. No doubt they did this because they could only find 1,000 people in the US to say they admired Obama and Hillary or they simply polled the White House staff. We have the same in Maryland as Gonzales and other agencies used for polling always seems to poll support for the governor's policies with a cohort of a few hundred.....again, probably the State House staff.
Raise your hands if you understand that sampling 403 Maryland citizens out of .......Maryland voter registration has 1,944,620 are registered as Democrats in 2010.......MEANS NOTHING! EVERYONE.
Raise your hands if you know 3-5% margin of error means not statistically valid!!!!!!!! EVERYONE.
Below you see the Maryland polling agency used the most and all of Maryland media repeat whatever is said. Finding 400 democratic voters in Maryland who say they still have faith in Obama's performance.....who still believe the statistics put forward by O'Malley making him look like he did a good job.....and now want his protege Brown to win.....YES, IT LOOKS LIKE THE COHORT CAME FROM THE STATE HOUSE!
As a scientist I understand means testing and know that the margin of error needs to be extremely low to be acceptable for scientific research. We do not need to be that low in these societal pollings, but we do know that once you go above 3% you lose any reliability in data.
Comparing percentages
In a plurality voting system, where the winner is the candidate with the most votes, it is important to know who is ahead.
Given the observed percentage difference p − q (2% or 0.02) and the standard error of the difference calculated above (.03), any statistical calculator may be used to calculate the probability that a sample from a normal distribution with mean 0.02 and standard deviation 0.03 is greater than 0.
Embargo: 12:01 am Thursday, October 17, 2013
Gonzales Research & Marketing Strategies, Inc.
Methodology
This survey also includes an oversampling of 403 registered Democrats who indicated they were likely to vote in the June 2014 primary election. A cross-section of interviews was conducted in each jurisdiction within the state to reflect Democratic primary election voting patterns. The margin of error on this group is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
President Barack Obama Job Approval
Among Maryland voters, 58% approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president
Statewide, 48% of voters
approve of the job O’Malley
is doing as governor
Democratic Primary
Forty percent of Maryland Democratic primary voters have a favorable opinion of Anthony
Brown
***********************************
As the interviewee stated in this report, these polls will only be used as propaganda in Afghan elections as they are now in the US. Look below to see again, Gallup is taking 1,000 polling samples within each nation polled.....1,000!!!!!!
THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW THE POLL IS ONLY ABOUT PROPAGANDA BECAUSE IT MEANS NOTHING!
Will Afghan Polling Data Help Alleviate Election Fraud?
by Sean Carberry
January 06, 2014 5:07 AM
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has commissioned a series of polls to see who Afghans favor in the April election. But between security challenges and "social desirability" biases, it can be difficult to impossible to get a clear read of the Afghan people.
*********************************
'Gallup conducts surveys in 160 countries and is committed to doing so for the entire century. The Gallup World Poll provides a scientific window into the thoughts and behaviors of 98% of the world's residents through nationally representative samples. It is the only global study of its kind in existence'.
Global Gallup Poll: US Voted Greatest Threat to World Peace
The polling agency Gallup recently asked about 1,000 people in each of 68 different countries which country they believed was the biggest threat to world peace.
**************************************
Below you see an analysis that shows how a major US polling organization, Gallup has been wrong over and again by wide margins and these sample sizes are part of the reason. More importantly is the movement of polls to being propaganda rather than true stats with integrity and honesty of reporting as the goal. You see, when the people behind them are part of the lying, cheating, stealing group....THE STATS BECOME IRRELEVANT.
MARYLAND KNOWS THAT BETTER THAN MOST STATES AS ALL DATA BY STATE IS SKEWED.
******************
Look below at my last article on reliability in research design and how polling data used to be the realm of public universities who took integrity and broad information collection seriously. Then think about what Gallup, Gonzalez and all other mainstream polling agencies are giving us. We need to go back to strong public universities working in the public interest and this includes the value of polling!
'To be clear, I would not recommend disregarding the Gallup poll. You should consider it — but in context.
The context is that its most recent results differ substantially from the dozens of other state and national polls about the campaign. It’s much more likely that Gallup is wrong and everyone else is right than the other way around'.
In National Polling, It’s Gallup vs. the Rest
By NATE SILVER
Published: October 19, 2012
The Gallup national tracking poll now shows a very strong lead for Mitt Romney. As of Friday, he was ahead by six points among likely voters, having led by seven points on Thursday.
However, the poll’s results are deeply inconsistent with the results that other polling firms are showing in the presidential race, and the Gallup poll has a history of performing very poorly when that is the case.
Other national polls now show a very slight lead for President Obama on average, while state polls continue to indicate a narrow advantage for the president in tipping-point states like Ohio. The FiveThirtyEight forecast has Mr. Obama as a modest favorite in the election largely on the basis of the state polls.
The Gallup poll is accounted for in the forecast model, along with all other state and national surveys.
There are two major pieces of information that we’re looking to extract from each poll. One is simply the raw number — who is ahead or behind? The other is the trend it shows in the race — which candidate is gaining or losing ground?
Different types of polls are relatively more or less useful for these purposes. Because national tracking polls like Gallup are published every day, they are useful for the trend part of the calculation.
There are six national tracking polls published most days. The others are from Rasmussen Reports, Ipsos, the RAND Corporation, Investors’ Business Daily and United Press International. (A seventh daily tracking poll, from Public Policy Polling, made its debut on Thursday.)
But of the daily tracking polls, the Gallup survey receives the largest weight in the model’s trendline calculation. It uses a larger sample size than most other polls, and its methodology includes calls to cellphone voters.
On the other hand, our pollster ratings are also based in part on past accuracy, and Gallup’s performance is middling in that department.
The Gallup poll seems to have an outsize influence on the subjective perception of where the presidential race stands, however — especially when the poll seems to diverge from the consensus.
This simply isn’t rational, in my view. Usually, when a poll is an outlier relative to the consensus, its results turn out badly.
You do not need to look any further than Gallup’s track record over the past few election cycles to see this.
In 2008, the Gallup poll put Mr. Obama 11 points ahead of John McCain on the eve of that November’s election. The average of the 15 or so national polls released just before the election put Mr. Obama up by about seven points.
The average did a good job; Mr. Obama won the popular vote by seven points. The Gallup poll had a four-point miss, however.
In 2010, Gallup put Republicans ahead by 15 points on the national Congressional ballot, higher than other polling firms, which put Republicans an average of 8 or 9 points ahead. In fact, Republicans won the popular vote for the House of Representatives by about seven percentage points — fairly close to the average of polls, but representing another big miss for Gallup.
The Gallup poll also has often found implausibly large swings within a race. In 2000, for example, Gallup had George W. Bush 16 points ahead of Al Gore among likely voters in polling it conducted in early August. By Sept. 20, about six weeks later, the firm had Mr. Gore up by 10 points instead: a 26-point swing over the course of a month and a half. No other polling firm showed a swing remotely that large.
Then in October 2000, Gallup showed a 14-point swing toward Mr. Bush over a few days, and had him ahead by 13 points on Oct. 27 — just 10 days before an election that ended in a virtual tie.
After the Republican convention in 2008, Gallup had Mr. McCain leading Mr. Obama by as many as 10 points among likely voters. Although some other polls also had Mr. McCain pulling ahead in the race, no other polling firm ever gave him more than a four-point lead.
It’s not clear what causes such large swings, although Gallup’s likely voter model may have something to do with it.
Even their registered voter numbers can be volatile, however. In early September of this year, after the Democratic conventions, they had Mr. Obama’s lead among registered voters going from seven points to zero points over the course of a week — and then reverting to six points just as quickly. Most other polling firms showed a roughly steady race during this time period.
Because Gallup’s polls usually take large sample sizes, statistical variance alone probably cannot account for these sorts of shifts. It seems to be an endemic issue with their methodology.
To be clear, I would not recommend disregarding the Gallup poll. You should consider it — but in context.
The context is that its most recent results differ substantially from the dozens of other state and national polls about the campaign. It’s much more likely that Gallup is wrong and everyone else is right than the other way around.
__________________________________________
What we are seeing with US polling is a direct attempt to frame all US political issues under the guise of polling. The way polling questions are asked or not asked and who is in the cohort overs the American public nothing but mis-information.
When a poll asks a general question like DO YOU SUPPORT THE IMMIGRATION BILL rather than having a question that offers categories important to the immigration policy found in that bill.....you skew the results. They know it and so do we. It is also how they kill any approach to getting all political views on an issue aired.
POLLING HAS NOW BECOME THE MEANS TO CAPTURE ALL POLITICAL TALK ON ALL ISSUES!
Polling used to be done by public universities for the most part and involved extensive attention to integrity and detail just as if it were a scientific data activity. Academics did due diligence to collecting the data needed for polling because they used those stats for public research. Now, public universities have been made into corporate branches and you see very little time placed by universities in this because it is not cost-effective! Meanwhile, the corporations allowed to dominate the polling arena now find the costs of real polling not necessary and give us these useless data collected as cheaply as possible....
THAT'S NAKED CAPITALISM FOR YOU!!!!
Reliability in Research Design
January 3, 20092By ActiveCampaign
When I think of reliability I imagine always knowing what to expect. If a person is able to produce the same quality work consistently then they are considered reliable. You see it in sports all the time. Certain players have a knack for coming through in key situations no matter how late in the season or how worn down they are. However, I can imagine few jobs that require more reliability than a surgeon. Having an off day for them could prove disastrous. For a measure to be reliable it must demonstrate consistency as well as repeatability. When carrying out research our results should be accurate across a range of measurements. In surveys you would like to think that you would get the same response no matter what mood your respondent is in but that is not always the case. A surgeon must deal with difficult situations while showing the same precision and reliability. That is a quality to be admired but you can not always expect everyone to act like a surgeon at all times. It’s also possible that your respondent won’t know what you mean when you ask them a certain question resulting in an answer that is entirely different from what you are attempting to measure.
Test-retest Reliability
If your survey respondent had to take your survey again would they answer the same questions the same way? Test-retest reliability measures reliability over time. A number of factors can affect reliability over time such as a person’s mood, time of the day, where the questions are placed in the survey (context effect), circumstantial events, vagueness, etc. A good test will take into account factors that may influence survey results over time and minimize them so that results show little variation. If a test is unreliable then any one of a number of factors can lead to varying results depending on when the question is asked. In general the more time a person takes between retesting the more variation you can expect in the responses.
If you ask Joe Q what he thinks about Candidate X on Tuesday he may view him favorably because X gave a really good speech on Monday. Say Candidate X is indited later in the week in a corruption scandal. Joe previously indicated that a candidate’s integrity is very important. Last week he said that he was leaning toward Candidate X. Now that Candidate X has been exposed you may think he is likely to give you a different response if you asked Joe the same question next Tuesday. The reliability of opinion polls can be doubtful depending on the questions we ask because opinions tend to fluctuate over time. What does Joe Q mean when he rates integrity as very important? Perhaps Joe Q considers anyone that shares his ideology to have integrity. Its possible that Joe Q would vote for Candidate X no matter what he thought of him personally because they share the same ideology. Probing Joe’s past voting record would be more indicative of voter preference than asking a subjective question about integrity. Asking him more objective questions that would not fluctuate from week to week would have higher test-retest reliability.
Parallel Forms Reliability
Another challenge reliability faces is in knowing what the best questions to ask are. What does Joe Q mean when he rates integrity as very important? Could we come up with better questions to predict how voters like Joe Q would vote? Another way to improve the reliability of a survey is to ensure that it is representative of the data you are trying to collect. To do this increase the sample size. If you are gathering research to find out whether voters like Joe Q are likely to vote for Candidate X then you need to find more people like Joe and ask them different questions or question sets based on the same construct.
You come up with a large set of questions to ask in your survey. The construct that you are measuring is voter preference. The large question set is split in half and you administer each set to half of the targeted population. You can then take a look at which questions are better indicators of voter preference. This combines what is known as a split test method with parallel form evaluation.
You can use parallel forms to measure a construct for people that are not like Joe Q. Here you would divide a population that is representative of all likely voters in two. Develop a large question set that measures a particular construct and then administer to each half of your representative population. Now you can learn which questions are better indicators for voter preference for a representative population.
Inter-rater Reliability
This is necessary if you are conducting your survey using an interview process. If multiple people are interviewing Joe Q to ask what his opinion on politics is then inter-rater reliability measures the degree to which the observers agree. This is the best way to measure reliability if you are using observation for your research.
Internal Consistency Reliability
The purpose of asking questions in surveys is to assess a particular construct or idea. Therefore different questions that measure the same construct should yield similar results. Reliability is determined on the basis of whether results are consistent for different items that measure the same construct. For example, you could check for reliability on your survey by asking a respondent two similar questions meant to measure the same thing.
- Average Inter-Item Correlation – when we ask a respondent two similar questions to measure the same construct. This compares correlations between this and any other paired questions to measure the same construct by calculating the mean of all paired comparisons.
- Average Itemtotal Correlation – where you take the average inter-item correlation and calculate a total score for each item.
- Split-half Correlation – you divide items that measure the same construct into two tests, apply them to the same group of people, and calculate the correlation between the two scores.
- Cronbach’s Alpha – when we calculate the average split half estimates from a sample population.
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