Lulz
So I assume people will not be referencing polls anymore then? They haven’t been even close to having their pulse on anything for years. It seems, nowadays there is no way to fix polling.
I did take an actual poll the other day. One of the real ones, it was a poll done by Qualtrics. My first inclination was to Christmas-tree the thing. Then I decided since it was a real poll, I would do it actually right.
My hypothesis is that polls basically died in the late 1980’s when Caller ID first started. Well not right away, but polling methodology hasn’t really changed much since the telephone. The problem is, who the hell takes phone surveys anymore? Who doesn’t screen their calls? And if they do answer a poll call, how many people don’t at least try to fuck with the poll taker. I know I have in the past.
This time, I got a text. It was basically saying that they are real people who aren’t trying to rip me off and they want to fill out the poll. I filled most of it out honestly, until it came for demographic info. They don’t deserve to know how old I am, how much I make, what color I am, etc. So I bullshitted that part.
Perhaps this texting thing will work out, I don’t know. I don’t have an answer to how to fix polling, maybe don’t ask so many damn questions. Or skip the demographic personal stuff people don’t want to tell you.
What I have been doing when “journalists” reference polls to write some bullshit trope, I have been going to the poll, which is often hard to find just from the article. The article will have a link, often to another article referencing the poll basically driving the same narrative, which links to another article, but will somewhere eventually at least say the name of the poll. Once I have the name of the poll I can track it down. The first thing I do, then is scroll to the last page of the poll which has the methodology. That’s where you figure out the poll is bullshit. When they conduct a nation-wide poll, consisting half landline and have cell phone calls to metropolises of the north-east of the country and their suburbs of up to 1000 people polled, an accurate representation of the whole country is highly unlikely.
Who the hell answers strange phone calls anymore? The only time I will answer an unknown number is when I am expecting a call from a stranger. Other than that, nope. I did do the poll when the link was texted to me and seemed legit enough, but who the hell knows? Perhaps I gave some hacker access to the deep dark recesses of my phone. Good luck, they won’t find anything on it. Nothing anybody but me would care about, but whatever. But, bottom line good security advice tells you, you never click on a link that you are not absolutely certain of. So your polling demographic are idiots like myself, willing to click on a unknown link, which is a discouraged practice in general. Or people who are willing to answer a phone number they are not familiar with, or people who pick up a land line and talk to a stranger, which isn’t your average person. Yeah, I think polls are done. The process is too antiquated and fraught with suspicion.
I don’t view opinion polls from papers and professional election pollsters in the same light. Certainly all polls have issues, several of which you pointed out. But election pollsters make a career out of trying to be close and accurate.
I’d put the drop off later, to the point where most people got rid of their landlines. When landline phones were the main contact point, more people were likely to answer polls and it took a long time for spam callers to get to the point they’re at now.
Phone polling is essentially dead, or will be very soon, and I think people are realizing that. Many will move online.
Perhaps the solution is to put out stories and link to the poll and set it up where a person can only take it once… When I went back to look up that poll I took, I found it welcoming me again. So I retook the same poll and totally fucked with the answers. I made it make no sense. Just for fun. So when that thing comes out, don’t trust it. Then I tried it for a 3rd time and it pegged me as having taken it. So I took it twice.
So Qualtrics is just the poll giver, I have no idea who’s poll it actually is. I will be able to recognize it by the questions.
It’s not that. Actual market research is VERY accurate but it also costs a fuckload of money when it is is done by actual professionals who also charge a fuckload of money. So I’m talking about at least a mid 5 figure sum for a single poll like that one with the sample size and scope taken into consideration for me to take it seriously. I highly doubt they spent that much on it.
Plus, it was a report of the results pf a poll, not showing the actual poll itself. And I don’t care for the “Thomson-Reuters standard” shit. It’s meaningless now. I’d rather know the name of the company who conducted the poll if it was outsourced.
So, IME, trivial polls for clickbait really aren’t worth shit.
Certain polls, like election predictions, can be pretty accurate because of the amount they’re willing to spend for the returns, both for viewership and reputation, but it depends on how they’re done, by whom, and how much is actually spent on them.
But if they’re getting competitive to the point they’re rushing out some half assed shit, the margin of error is going to be a lot higher.
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@Aragorn Happy Thanksgiving.
Have an extra side of Gilmour.
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@treco Thank you sir! You too. Have some extra bourbon “mashed potatoes” today 
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What kind of lunatic thinks this way? I’m almost laughing, but…not quite. Because he’s the fucking PRESIDENT.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332317320191074304?s=20
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@EmilyQ…it’s this kind of unbelievable pettiness and vindictiveness that had me starting (regrettably) another “Trump” thread.
What this man did yesterday (and not just any man…but the President of the United States of America…) went beyond understanding to me (IMO)…
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If you think that POTUS is just a job title and that what you are really dealing with is Donald Trump, it makes complete sense.
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This “fact” was pulled out of thin air. It had like 5 million views on Twitter when he posted this. He’s detached from reality
This is what has baffled me for 4 years. It’s almost like some people are treating the position of a President as if he’s the equivalent to some youtube celeb or something. Joe Rogan should consider running some day.
What happened? Was it a combination of Trump saying too many dumb things without a filter and the MSM dissing him every single day with every minute thing they could get their hands on, hence “cheapening” the role of the Head of State? Or is this just social media culture expanding it’s influence on the masses?
I actually have no idea. I’d bet on social media influence expanding, but I have to point out that Trump has done at least as much to cheapen the office as the media in responding.
You have justifiable criticisms of the media (many of which I agree with) but they are at least nominally doing their job by calling out the obvious bullshit from Trump.
Trump falls prey to the saying by eminent sage Mark Twain: “it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
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Yes, completely agree. The role of a free press is to question politicians so they don’t get out of line. Even with it’s flaws, it’s a hell of a lot better than a controlled press mostly feeding the public State propaganda.
My fear is that if they go too far, the public itself is going to get sick of them enough to call for their censorship, some politicians will seize the opportunity to try to make this happen and the spineless ones will even go along with it.
This is absolutely a fear I share. And the other is like it: even if nobody calls for censorship of the media, enough people will completely distrust EVERYTHING and search out alternative (fringe) sources of information and we will lose all ability to share a reality and hence productive debate.
Scylla and Charybdis.
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Update on recount and court cases:
Trump campaign spends 3 million on Wisconsin recount. So far it has results in a net gain for Biden in one of the two counties: Milwaukee County vote recount gives Biden small boost | AP News
Another judge in Pennsylvania has slammed the Trump court cases because they have no merit, presented no evidence, etc, etc. From the article:
“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” 3rd Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, wrote for the three-judge panel, all appointed by Republican presidents.
GOP campaigning in Georgia is hilarious. It can be summed up like this:
“The elections have been stolen from Trump and we’ll most definitely overturn it in court, but you should really, really get out and vote on the next fraudulent run off elections in Georgia because we could lose the Senate and then Bid…I mean it’s really important to go out and vote and President Trump loves you so much”
Trump doesn’t care because he’s not wasting his own money. He’s only wasting the suckers money who believe his bs and send it willingly.
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Sadly Hilarious. I’m going to laugh when Trump costs the GOP their Senate majority after all the snivelling GOP leadership did for 4 years.
Then I’m going to be worried about a Dem majority in both houses of legislature.
They lie regularly. That’s not doing their job even nominally. They are not even try to do their job. They roll out the same tripe day after day, Orange man bad. That’s not doing journalism, that’s just slamming a guy they don’t like relentlessly because they don’t like him. They lied about him so much that the literally made him the most important person in the world.
The media actually put out a story about Ivanka farting and blaming someone else. I take my hat off to such journalistic integrity.
Social media is dangerous because it gives stupidity a voice. But we cannot do anything about that now. People choose to go on these networks and subject themselves to it, for some reason. So we have to learn to deal with it.
The solution to twitter is to not be on it. Then you are not subjected to any stupidity.
The other thing is to realize as the difference as to how many people are on it versus are not. And as big as it is, most people are not on twitter, or anything else. What that means is one has to understand scope. Social media is not the real world, but too many, including the media thinks it is. So the news they are putting out really should be called ‘twitter Daily’. It would make sense to be a part of the news rather than entirety of it. As I provided in my “The MSM lies and now we have proof” thread, the evidence that the media functions almost solely as a subsidiary of twitter. The news is news about people on twitter, not the actual news.
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