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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 7/8/08

The Election Equation; Why pollsters get it wrong and Why Pundits Spin like they do

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Everyone talks about it. Do a poll posing a theoretical Democrat against a theoretical Republican candidate for president and there is a 15% or more advantage for the Democrat.

But plug in the names and you see as low as a 2% difference in the polls. Why?

I think there are two factors. One is all about racism. Yep. That ugly, nasty, embarassing part of America-- which, apparently, is particularly manifested by over 60 whites.

The other factor is the pollster policy. They are using the same numbers they've been using for a long time to create their polls-- about 40% Democrat, 38% Republican and the rest independent. But things have changed. First, the young people-- the "Millenials" who will change this election and elections for the next fifty years to come, use cell phones. They get left out of the polls and they are a good two to one for Obama. Then, there is the reality that the old proportions are no longer accurate. Now, the numbers should be more like 46-48% Democrat and 28-32% Republican. If they compose a poll group with the old proportions, it will give the results they get. If they modified the polls demographic components to reflect all the cell-phone using millenials and adjusted the dem/rep proportions, the results would be very different.

The handy thing about using inappropriate, unscientific, yet habitual approaches is it makes things look better for McCain. That may help his fundraising, but it also helps Obama, since Barack's team can send out calls for volunteers and funding that point out how close things are.

The offensive thing is the way MSM newscasters and pundits use the stats to malign Obama, with remarks like, "What's wrong with him?"

But now, you know better. This election, unless there is some kind of October Surprise, in the form of a new war, probably with Iran, initiated by a Tonkin Gulf phony event, and maybe even then, will go heavily for Obama. The pollsters have it wrong. They're blowing it and they are stuck with their old ways.
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Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

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Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

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