Cooking the Iranian Election Books

At last there's some statistical evidence how the election books may have been cooked in the 2009 Presidential elections:

The Washington Post: "The Devil Is in the Digits", by Bernd Beber and Alexandra Scacco

Since the declaration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory in Iran's presidential election, accusations of fraud have swelled. Against expectations from pollsters and pundits alike, Ahmadinejad did surprisingly well in urban areas, including Tehran -- where he is thought to be highly unpopular -- and even Tabriz, the capital city of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi's native East Azarbaijan province.

Others have pointed to the surprisingly poor performance of Mehdi Karroubi, another reform candidate, and particularly in his home province of Lorestan, where conservative candidates fared poorly in 2005, but where Ahmadinejad allegedly captured 71 percent of the vote. Eyebrows have been raised further by the relative consistency in Ahmadinejad's vote share across Iran's provinces, in spite of wide provincial variation in past elections.

These pieces of the story point in the direction of fraud, to be sure. They have led experts to speculate that the election results released by Iran's Ministry of the Interior had been altered behind closed doors. But we don't have to rely on suggestive evidence alone. We can use statistics more systematically to show that this is likely what happened. Here's how. We'll concentrate on vote counts (...) >>>

Confessions of an Astroturfing Troll

Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group: "Obama: PSYOP Master"

Heard this on the radio today:

Ok, I want to clear my conscious a little. Hopefully you could make a blog post to help some fellow clinton supporters out.I work for a campaign and can’t wait for this week to be over.I was doing it for a job. I was not a fan of any candidate but over time grew to love HRC.The internal campaign idea is to twist, distort, humiliate and finally dispirit you.We pay people and organize people to go to all the online sites and “play the part of a clinton or mccain supporter who just switched our support for obama”We do this to stifle your motivation and to destroy your confidence.We did this the whole primary and it worked.Sprinkle in mass vote confusion and it becomes bewildering. Most people lose patience and just give up on their support of a candidate and decide to just block out tv, news, websites, etc.This surprisingly has had a huge suppressing movement and vote turnout issues.Next, we infiltrate all the blogs and all the youtube videos and overwhelm the voting, the comments, etc. All to continue this appearance of overwhelming world support.People makes posts to the effect that the world has “gone mad”

Thats the intention. To make you feel stressed and crazy and feel like the world is ending.

We have also had quite a hand in skewing many many polls, some we couldn’t control as much as we would have liked. But many we have spoiled over. Just enough to make real clear politics look scarey to a mccain supporter. Its worked, alough the goal was to appear 13-15 points ahead.

see, the results have been working. People tend to support a winner, go with the flow, become “sheeple”

The polls are roughly 3-5 points in favor of Barack. Thats due to our inflation of the polls and pulling in the sheeple.

Our donors, are the same people who finance the MSM. Their interests are tied, Barack then tends to come across as teflon. Nothing sticks. And trust, there were meetings with Fox news. The goal was to blunt them as much as possible. Watch Bill Oreilly he has become much more diplomatic and “fair and balanced” and soft. Its because he wants to retain the #1 spot on cable news and to do that he has to have access to the Obama campaign and we worked hard at stringing him a long and keeping him soft for an interview swap. It worked and now he is anticipating more access. So he is playing it still soft.

This is why nothing sticks.

The operation is massive, the goal is to paint a picture that is that of a winner, regardless of the results.

There is no true inauguration draft or true grant park construction going on. There will be a party, but we are boasting beyond the truth to make it seem like the election is wrapped up.

Our goal is to continue to make you lose your moral. We worked hard at persuasion and paying off and timing and playing the right political numbers to get key republican endorsements to make it seem even more like it was over and the world was coming to an end for you all.

There is a huge staff of people working around the clock, watching every site, blogs, etc. We flood these sites. We have had a goal to overwhelm.

The truth is here. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

I am saying this because I know HRC was better for the country, and now realize this. I was too late by the time I connected to her. To me Barack was just a cool young dude that seemed like a star. I didn’t know him or his policies, but now I understand more than I care to and I realize his interests are more for him, and the DNC and all working like puppets with dean. I always thought a president wanted the better good for the country. The end result I see is everyone dependent on the government, this means more and more people voting for the DNC. This means the future is forever altered. I don’t see this as america, so I am now supporting John Mccain.

Sarah Palin is a huge threat, and our campaign has feared her like you can’t imagine. If it seems unfair how she has been treated, well its because she has had a team working round the clock to make her look like a fool.

this is a big conspiracy and I am so shocked that its not realized.

We released a little blurb the other day that the Obama campaign was already working on reelection and now putting our efforts towards 2012. This was to make it seem like it was above us to continue caring about 2008. Trust me, its a lie. David is very smart, but its a sticky ugly not very truthful kind of intelligence.

Its not over yet, but I think the machine is working. And its a hill to climb.

I will be quitting my post on nov 5th and my vote will be for John Mccain. Fortunately, my position has been a marketing position and I don’t feel I had any part of anything I would feel guilty for. But I look forward to getting out of this as the negativity and environment upsets me.

I wish you all well, and goodluck.

PS my name is not really sarah. but I am a female and I understand your plight.

ADDENDUM: There is no real way to verify whether or not sarah p really works for a campaign. Obamunists will quickly point that out while declaring such comments as manufactured “smears” by a desperate campaign facing inevitable defeat. Governor Palin’s admirers, on the other hand, will see in the comment confirmation of things long suspected. We’ve seen what sarah p describes. We know for a fact that somebody is working overtime to suppress the enthusiasm and optimism of decided and potential McCain-Palin voters. What sarah p reveals in her comment is consistent with what we already believe to be true. She either is what she says she is and speaks the truth, or she is not what she says she is and still describes the Obama campaign’s Morale Operation accurately, or she is not what shBlogger: Most Outrageous Survey Award - Create Poste says she is and is lying about the whole thing.

I like the idea of sarah p being a lone wolf civilian irregular information operator who actually doesn’t work for any campaign in any offical way. Her comment is so good it should be true, and her message of resistance may very well buck up those who receive it.

UPDATE: Ace is suspicious.
UPDATE II: Either Anonymous_14 is sarah p’s sock puppet or there is another disgruntled mole in the Obama camp. Read the whole thing. My favorite excerpts pasted below:

Put simply, you are being manipulated. That was and is our job – to manipulate you (the electorate) and the media (we already had them months ago). Our goal is to create chaos with the other side, not hope. I’ve come to the realization (as the campaign already has) that if this comes to the issues, Barack Obama doesn’t have a chance. His only chance is to foster disorganization, chaos, despair, and a sense of inevitability among the Republicans. It has worked up until now. Joe the Plumber has put the focus on the issues again, and this scares us more than anything.

3 – Obama’s radical connections. Standards operating procedure has been to cry “racism” whenever one of these has been brought up. We even have a detailed strategy ready to go should McCain ever bring Rev. Wright up. Though by themselves they are of minimal worth, taken together, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfelger, and now, Rashid Khalili, are exactly what the campaign does not need. The more focus on them, the more this election becomes a referendum on Obama. The campaign strategy from the very beginning was to make this election a referendum on Bush. Strategists have been banging their head on how successfully McCain has distanced himself from Bush. This has worked, and right now the tide is in his favor. People are taking a new look at Barack Obama, and our experience when this happens tells us this is not good news at all. When they take a look at him, one or more of these names are bound to be brought up. McCain has wisely not harped on this in recent weeks and let voters decide for themselves. This was a trap we set for him, and he never fully took the bait. Senator Obama openly dared him to bring up Ayers. This was not due to machismo on the part of Obama, but actually due to campaign strategy. Though McCain’s reference to Ayers fell flat in the last debate, people in the Obama campaign were actually disappointed that he didn’t follow through on it more and getting into it. Our focus groups found this out: When McCain brings these connections up, voters are turned off to him. They’d rather take this into consideration themselves, and when this happens, our numbers begin to tank.

What truly bothers this campaign is the fact that some pollsters get up to an 80% “refuse to respond” result. You can’t possibly include these into the polls. The truth is, people are afraid to let people know who they are voting for. The vast majority of these respondents are McCain supporters. Obama is the “hip” choice, and we all know it.

The only way he wins is over a dispirited, disorganized, and demobilized opposition. This is how it has been for all of his campaigns. What surprises me is that everyone has fallen for it. You may point to the polls as proof of the inevitability of all of this. If so, you have fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

>>>

Another Poll Explanation

Real Clear Politics/Horse Race Blog: "A Note on the Polls"

I've received several emails from people asking about the polls. The national polls do seem pretty variable, so I thought I would toss in my two cents on them.

First, we need a short primer on basic statistics. Real Clear Politics offers an unweighted average, or mean, of the polls. As long as there is more than one poll in the average, we can also calculate the standard deviation, which is one of the most important concepts in inferential statistics. The standard deviation simply tells us how much the polls are disagreeing with one another.

For instance, suppose we are testing the strength of Candidate A. We have 32 polls, which we can arrange graphically in what is called a histogram. (...) >>>

Polling: Art or Science?

WSJ: "Are the Polls Accurate?"

Can we trust the polls this year? That's a question many people have been asking as we approach the end of this long, long presidential campaign. As a recovering pollster and continuing poll consumer, my answer is yes -- with qualifications.

To start with, political polling is inherently imperfect. Academic pollsters say that to get a really random sample, you should go back to a designated respondent in a specific household time and again until you get a response. But political pollsters who must report results overnight have to take the respondents they can reach. So they weight the results of respondents in different groups to get a sample that approximates the whole population they're sampling. (...) >>>

False Polling as a Campaign Strategy

Hillbuzz: "Lie of the Day: SoetorObama is leading in swing states"

NOTE: We received the below from a mother in Colorado who was recently polled. She describes how the poll was conducted, what questions were asked, and how her poll was differentiated (how the pollster recorded her vote).

We’ve never heard from anyone who’s been polled directly before, but if this is how the polls are actually conducted and recorded, we now understand why SoetorObama did 15% worse in some states during the primaries than what he was polled as.

Dear HillBuzz,

OK, well I got polled and now I am pissed.

We just moved back to CO and I registered as an Independent. I think that is the reason I got the call.

Here is how it went - they called when my 10 month old was upset so I told them not right now. She said she just wanted a few questions and didn’t mind my son being upset. I said fine. (...) >>>

Hillbuzz have made "An Eeyore-free Zone" a permanent post.

The Freedomists have more:

These folks are on top of all kinds of Obama BS, false polling, and MORE. the FIX IS IN for the messiah!

We have included some sample article and useful information, the first reveals how Matt Drudge wields his “power” like a mad hatter, purely for his own fun and entertainment, and CANNOT BE TRUSTED, and the next is a letter revealing HOW these polls are being “pushed” for Obama.

FROM HILLBUZZ

Here’s today’s Drudge Report. Gallup: 49-47, with Obama ahead by only 2, and 4 undecided, where McCain will win undecideds 4:1, so that means the actual number is 50-50.

Drudge screws with people’s heads…remember, the morning of Super Tuesday, Drudge said Hillary Clinton would lose California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts and that she would be “massacred” and “humiliated” that day. He did that to get Clinton supporters to stay home. Drudge is really smart in that all day he changes his site — so unless you are sharp enough to take screen grabs all day, there’s no record of what he said an hour a go.

We remember people TERRIFIED and PANICKED as we prepared for the Results Party on Super Tuesday — some people wanted to cancel it, because Drudge had the flashing red/blue siren up saying, “Obama ahead by 10% in California!”, “Obama leading in New York by 5%”, etc. That went on right up until FOX called those states for Clinton — and she won BIG.

We live in such an amnesiac society, but we have to tell you that Super Tuesday was burned into our memories forever because Eeyores drove us crazy all day. One, in particular, had to have their hoof held all day long, being reassured every 30 minutes that yes, Clinton would win all expected states. We were only wrong about Missouri — which Clinton lost by less than 1%. Everything else worked out like we thought.

Remember, the Kennedys, Kerry and Deval Patrick were supposed to win Massachusetts for Obama. Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver, and Oprah were supposed to win California . DIDN’T HAPPEN.

We are warning all of you right now — and we ask a favor of you to spread this to all Republican sites you go to — on Election Day, Drudge is going to call the race for Obama at about 9am. He will run stories all day with the red/blue flashing siren showing Obama ahead everywhere. The national media will do that too. They will all be using faulty exit polls or just making up lies all day, to try to keep people from going out to vote. They will try to do what they tried to do to Hillary Clinton in South Dakota on June 3rd: Remember, the AP actually told people to stay home and not vote because it was all over and Clinton “had conceded”. They did this around 10am and the Clinton campaign had to threaten to sue the AP to get them to retract it, with Howard Wolfson having to go on the air and tell people to actually vote and not listen to the AP.

Drudge does this to show how much power he has — AP does this because they want Obama to win.

We are warning you about what is going to happen on November 4th. We need you to spread the word to others, and take the advice of people who have been there, and done that.

When the actual results come in, McCain will be the winner — but you better believe every dirty trick will be used to try to psyche Republicans out. You all seem fairly unaware of Eeyore Syndrome or how devastating it is because you didn’t watch our Democratic primaries closely enough. The manipulation is real, and it is intense.

Drudge reported this fairly accurate poll today…tomorrow he could be back on the media bandwagon for Obama again. There is no way to tell with him, because his agenda is squarely his own, and it’s self-aggrandizement .

So what’s going to happen is that all the Eeyores will see this poll and feel better — so that in a few days, when Drudge or the MSM releases another bogus poll showing an Obama lead, you will all freak out again and go back to the “We’re doomed! We’re doomed!” nonsense.

We’ve seen this garbage so many times — it’s like that movie Groundhog Day.

http://hillbuzz. wordpress. com/2008/ 10/16/attention- eeyores-more- proof-you- are-being- manipulated/

>>>

Statistical Fluke?

The Next Right: "Are McCain's Negative Attacks Working? -- UPDATE"

Y'know, one of the perverse incentives of journalism --especially e-journalism where you don't have editors -- is that you have every incentive to publish a story prematurely. That makes it difficult to allow story lines to play themselves out fully before you comment. To put it more colloquially, if ya snooze, ya lose.

So in that spirit, I'll just note that the RCP average for Obama has gone from Obama +6.2 to Obama +4.7 in the past couple of days. The Hotline/FD tracker now has narrowed from a 7-point Obama lead to a 2-point Obama lead in two days. Rasmussen has narrowed from an 8-point lead to a 6-point lead. Zogby (not an internet poll) has it at a 2-point Obama lead, down a point from yesterday. Battleground shows a drop from a 7-point Obama lead to a 4-point Obama lead. Gallup hasn't come out yet today.

Now I'm well versed in error margins, but it would be pretty unlikely for all four polls to simultaneously move in the same direction. One of the benefits of an average like RCP is that with 8 datapoints or so, the sampling errors should somewhat cancel each other out, since you should end up with an equal distribution around the true amount.

So what to make of this? Just one-in-10,000 statistical fluke? Republicans coming home? Something we didn't see in the debates? Ayers? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Oh, and if the polls shift back toward Obama tomorrow, this post will self-destruct.

UPDATE: Aaaaaaand just like that, Gallup comes in as the only one of the five (six if you count Kos/R2K) to show movement away from McCain (+9 to +11). >>>

The Propaganda Tool

Beacon: "The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls"

A former senior editor at the Gallup Poll exposes how pollsters don't report public opinion, they manufacture it

On January 8, 2008, the date of the New Hampshire primary, media pollsters made their biggest prediction gaffe since dubbing Thomas Dewey a shoo-in to beat incumbent president Harry S. Truman. Eleven different polls forecast a solid win by Barack Obama; instead, Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire and recharged her candidacy. The months that followed only brought more dismal performances and contradictory results-undeniable evidence that something is terribly wrong with the polling industry today.

It's easy to spot the election polls that get it wrong. Equally misleading and often far more disastrous are polls misrepresenting public opinion on government policy. For instance, in the period leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, every major media poll showed substantial public support for a preemptive strike. In truth, there was no majority of Americans calling for war.

For the first time, David W. Moore—praised as a "scholarly crusader" by the New York Times—reveals that pollsters don't report public opinion, they manufacture it. And they do so at the peril of our democratic process. While critics cry foul over partisan favoritism in the mainstream media, what's really at work is a power bias that polls legitimate by providing the stamp of public approval.

Drawing on over a decade's experience at the Gallup Poll and a distinguished academic career in survey research, Moore describes the questionable tactics pollsters use to create poll-driven news stories-including force-feeding respondents, slanting question wording, and ignoring public ignorance on even the most arcane issues. More than proof that the numbers do lie, The Opinion Makers clearly and convincingly spells out how urgent it is that we make polls deliver on their promise to monitor, not manipulate, the pulse of democracy.

- Read the preface.

- Listen to an interview with David Moore on NHPR.

- Read David Moore's posts on pollster.com.

- Read "Pollsters' Schizophrenia and the 'Convention Bounce" on the U.S. News and World Report website.

- Listen to David Moore and John Zogby on the Diane Rehm show September 3rd. (...) >>>

Cooking the Books as a Campaign Tactic

Classical Values: "The Numbers Game"

More than one person has asked me why the polls are so out of whack with what they see as their reality. So what is that reality? (...)

People lie to pollsters. Unsourced anecdote: a nice sounding black lady calls and asks who you are voting for? Are some people going to be nice and say Obama when in reality it is going to be McCain? It happens.

Now how about some analysis by people smarter even than me. (...)

Voter models are the essence of political polls. You take a sample of a few hundred or a few thousand people and predict how that sample can reflect 10s-100s of millions of people. If you are off by even a small fraction in your assumptions the bottom line could be off by 5, 10 or 20% (despite an MoE claim of a few points).

We have a perfect example of this in two Colorado Polls out recently. The first poll was commented on by our Reader MerlinOS2:

PPP just released a poll in Colorado which puts Obama up +7

Now what the issue is here is that the party split was

Dem 40
Rep 36
Ind 24

However August voter registration number per the spreadsheet available from the Secretary of State show the registration breakdown is

Dem 30.6
Rep 34.8
Ind 34.5

Details on the poll in question can be found here. Just this week American Research Group (ARG) also released a poll for Colorado (which is not used in the RCP poll of polls strangely). Its voter model was Dem 32%, Rep 35% and Ind 33%, very close to the ACTUAL voter registration levels noted by MerlinOS2. The result: McCain 48%, Obama 45% - a McCain lead of +3%. (Note: this polls also shows McCain tied with women)

These polls were taken at basically the same time in the same state. But we can see how the voter model can really change the bottom line (a 10% difference). (...)

Newsbusters looks at the fabrication side of polling. You know. They just make shit up. Again it is all about party weightings.

In the kitchens of the Associated Press, it's almost as if the wire service asked its chief cook -- er, pollster -- GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media, to do the following:

* Whip up a tasty, representative poll after the Republican Convention.
* Three weeks later, make the same dish, but this time adjust the mix of ingredients by radically oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans, thereby creating a false illusion of momentum in the campaign of Barack Obama, and of decline in John McCain's.
* Hope people don't notice the changes in the recipe.

Of course we don't know if the differences between AP-CfK's Sept. 5-10 and Sept. 27-30 results were created deliberately, but the results sure look suspicious (both polls are available at PDF links found at AP-GfK's home page).

Read the article if you want to check out the links. Me I want to look at some numbers and we do in fact have a few.

"Somehow," the sample make-up changed from 33-31 Democrat to 40-29 Democrat from the earlier to the latter poll -- a shift of nine points.

"Somehow," the Strong-Dem vs. Strong-GOP difference went from nothing to eight points.

"Somehow," the Strong-GOP vs. Moderate-GOP mix went from +3 to -3, a swing of six points.

Well Newsbusters has charts full of numbers and more text so for the numbers obsessed (hey there may be a key to winning the lottery in there) have a look. There is always more to learn.

I'd like to finish up with analyst DJ Drummond of Stolen Thunder whose motto is: A man must be accountable, else everything he does counts for nothing.

Yep. Any way DJ looks at the Secret Poll

I have been working through the poll numbers for quite a while now, sorting out valid patterns from the fakes. I held off posting the true state of things for a long time, for a number of reasons, but I notice that some on the Right have begun to lose hope and make sounds of giving up. So I will tell you plainly, that

We Are Winning

and can only fall in this election if you give up. It's been a long road and the enemy has been his usual foul self, with lies and smears and everything we have learned to expect from people who put power above any moral or honorable precepts. It's close, but here's where we have been, and where we are:

August 31: McCain 41.77%, Obama 41.06%

September 7: McCain 42.45%, Obama 42.04%

September 14: McCain 45.71%, Obama 39.62%

September 21: McCain 44.48%, Obama 42.06%

September 28: McCain 42.73%, Obama 41.62%

And based on the demographic responses, once the undecideds shake out if we work as hard as we can and continue to keep faith, the final popular vote will be

McCain 51.59%

Obama 48.41%

Keys to remember:

This is not a football game or a baseball game, it's politics. Support is built up gradually and won bits at a time. Also, some of the best gains are not obvious at first, because some significant actions take time to develop. McCain and Obama both fell back a bit the last week of September, McCain because Republican support fell off a bit, Obama lost independents' support. This is a salient factor in where the candidates' opportunities and weaknesses lay.

Now I have cribbed everything DJ posted. Which is kind of like stealing. In fact it is stealing. In my defense it wasn't a long post and DJ answers some interesting questions in the comments. So do the right thing and give him a click. Plus his advice is critical: keep the faith. Do not give up. Make sure you and all your friends show up on election day.

I'm going to double down on the above comments. Here is what I say about all this. Again: Let us not give Obama the election by staying home depressed on election day. If he is going to win make him earn it. Get out and vote and make sure everyone you know gets out and votes. Make him know he was in a fight.

In other words fight the trolls on the blogs. And come election day get out the vote like your life and your country depended on it. Because it does. Even in a state like Illinois where I reside, every vote counts because it adds to the popular vote totals even if your state is going for Obama in the electoral college.

Vote Dammit

And if you want to do something about vote fraud read this, because polls aren't the only way the numbers are being cooked this year.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

(...) >>>

Quotes on Statistics and Polls

Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything.
~Gregg Easterbrook

98% of all statistics are made up.
~Author Unknown

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
~Aaron Levenstein

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable.
~Bobby Bragan, 1963

Statistics can be made to prove anything - even the truth.
~Author Unknown

Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off.
~Paul Brodeur, Outrageous Misconduct

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.
~Author Unknown

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
~Author Unknown

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than for illumination.
~Andrew Lang

One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is the new science of Statistics.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Statistics are like women; mirrors of purest virtue and truth, or like whores to use as one pleases.
~Theodor Billroth

Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.
~William W. Watt

Then there is the man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches.
~W.I.E. Gates

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
~Rex Stout, Death of a Doxy

I always find that statistics are hard to swallow and impossible to digest. The only one I can ever remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable.
~Mrs. Robert A. Taft

Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture….
~H.G. Wells, The Undying Fire

The average human has one breast and one testicle.
~Des McHale

While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.
~Arthur Conan Doyle

A statistical analysis, properly conducted, is a delicate dissection of uncertainties, a surgery of suppositions.
~M.J. Moroney

Statistics may be defined as “a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty.”
~W.A. Wallis

After all, facts are facts, and although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, “Lies - damned lies - and statistics,” still there are some easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out of.
~Leonard Courtney, speech, August 1895, New York, “To My Fellow-Disciples at Saratoga Springs,” printed in The National Review (London, 1895) (Thanks, Mark)

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
~Mark Twain, autobiography, 1904 (but, as yet no actual record of this under Disraeli’s authorship)

The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus.
~Laplace, Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1820

I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.
~Louis D. Brandeis

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
~Joe Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945

I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone - the chances that all the functions of an individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity.
~George Gallup

Hat Tip: "gettyleigh"

Poll Weighing Explained

Wizbang: "How Liberal Trolls Are Working To Get McCain Elected President"

Let's start with the latest poll numbers. Yep, Obama back on top, is the headline for many of them, though it's a bit tight. I guess we should worry on the Right? Hmmmm, well maybe not so much, just as those on the Left did not have that much to worry about when McCain got the 'Palin Bounce' earlier this month. I said when the first bumps came out that I did not think Palin's effect would really be that immediate, and I have always said that the reader should go well past the headline to find out what a poll says. So, taking my own advice, let's see what Gallup has to say.

The Gallup Organization is as clean and straight-arrow a polling group as I have ever found. Their methodology is consistent and transparent, their questions are the same and they have a longer history than anyone else in the business. But even Gallup has a few odd quirks, and when you see them it might change how you look at their poll releases. For this article, I am looking at the Gallup 'Daily Tracking Poll' for the Presidential election. For the five most recent weekly reports, here's where Gallup says the candidates stood:

Aug 21: Obama 45, McCain 44
Aug 28: Obama 48, McCain 41
Sep 04: Obama 49, McCain 42
Sep 11: McCain 48, Obama 44
Sep 18: Obama 48, McCain 44

From that, it appears that a tight race opened up first for Obama, then McCain, then Obama again, with each candidate sitting anywhere from 41 to 49 percent support (not counting margin of error) during that time. Fair enough, but let's look at their support by party identification, first by Obama:

Liberal Democrat support for Obama - 88% Aug 21, 91% Aug 28, 93% Sep 4 through Sep 18.

Moderate Democrat support for Obama - 78% Aug 21 and 28, 81% Sep 4 through Sep 18.

Conservative Democrat support for Obama - 68% Aug 21, 63% Aug 28, 77% Sep 4, 70% Sep 11, 66% Sep 18

Hmmm. Obama's support goes up and down, but the Liberal and Moderate Democrat support for Obama has been steady all of September. Odd, isn't it? And support for Obama among Conservative Democrats went down four points in the last week, even though his overall support is supposed to have gone up four points. How to figure that?

Perhaps it's in the Independents. After all, if Obama started winning them over, he'd not only be making gains overall but gaining support where he wants it the most.

Independent support for Obama - 24% Aug 21, 29% Aug 28, 23% Sep 4, 29% Sep 11, and 27% Sep 18

Hmmm, again. Obama gained support among Independents in the last month, but he actually lost two points among Independents in the last week. So that 4 point gain overall is still a mystery.

Nothing to do, then, but look at the Republicans. It would really be something if he's improving support from GOP voters:

Liberal/Moderate Republican support for Obama - 16% Aug 21, 13% Aug 28, 14% Sep 4, 16% Sep 11, 10% Sep 18

Ouch. Obama lost six points among Liberal and Moderate Republicans in the past week.

Conservative Republican support for Obama - 6% Aug 21, 5% Aug 28, 4% Sep 4, 3% Sep 11 and 18

No change there in the past week.

Taken altogether, there is no group of political identification where Obama's support has increased in the past week. Mathematically, therefore, there is only one way in which Gallup could show an increase in Obama's overall support, when none of the party identification groups showed improvement for him. I will come back to that in a moment, but the reader should think about it, because it's very important, that only possible way this could happen.

Before I explain that possibility, I want to look at John McCain's support by specific party identification groups. The man, according to Gallup, lost four points of overall support in the past week,

Conservative Republican support for McCain - 89% Aug 21, 91% Aug 28, 94% Sep 4 and 11, 95% Sept 18

Interesting. McCain's support among Conservative Republicans went up a point in the last week. Well, let's move on:

Liberal/Moderate Republican support for McCain - 75% Aug 21, 77% Aug 28, 78% Sep 4 and 11, 85% Sep 18

Wow, McCain's support from Liberal and Moderate Republicans climbed by seven points in the past week, and yet we are told his overall support fell by four points? That is very odd, wouldn't you say? It must have been the Independents, perhaps?

Independent support for McCain - 34% Aug 21, 31% Aug 28, 29% Sep 4, 28% Sep 11, and 32% Sep 18

Stranger and stranger, McCain's support among Independents went up by four points in the past week, just as his support from Republicans increased, yet we are told his overall support went down by four. Very hard to explain that using the math most of us learned in school, isn't it? Well, there's just one place left to look. Maybe somehow McCain used to have significant support among Democrats, but lost it? Let's find out:

Conservative Democrat support for McCain - 23% Aug 21, 26% Aug 28, 15% Sep 4, 21% Sep 11, 24% Sep 18

Hmpf. Once again, a group where support for McCain went up, but the overall says he went down.

Moderate Democrat support for McCain - 14% Aug 21, 13% August 28, 11% Sep 4, 12% Sep 11 and 18.

Steady there, so that one does not explain it.

Liberal Democrat support for McCain - 6% Aug 21, 6% Aug 28, 4% Sep 4 and 11, 5% Sep 18.

It's only a point, but again we see McCain's numbers in this group went up.

So, put it all together, and in the past week Obama has stayed steady or lost support in every party identification group, yet Gallup says his overall support went up four points. And McCain stayed steady or went up in every party identification group, yet we are supposed to accept the claim that his overall support went down by four points? Anyone have an answer for how that is even possible?

Well, actually I do. There is one, and only one, possible way that such a thing can happen mathematically. And that way, is that Gallup made major changes to the political affiliation weighting from the last week to now. Gallup has significantly increased the proportional weight of Democrat response and reduced the weight of Republican response. Bear in mind that this assumes that people change the foundation of their political opinion like a showgirl changes costumes, which has no scientific basis or historical support whatsoever. As I said earlier, the Gallup Organization is very much a professional polling agency, who tries their level best to gauge the national mood. That, after all, is why I chose to use their poll for my examination. I could do the same thing with any other of the major published polls, and I can tell you straight-up that I would find the same practice going on everywhere. But just because something is popular, does not validate it as a scientific method. Rather than report the rising and falling levels of support for Obama and McCain with constant party identification weighting, the Gallup and other polls are shifting the party weights over time, which pretty explains how the 'bounce' happens for each convention. When the Democrats held their convention, the polls increased the weight of Democrats and lowered the Republican response, and when the Republicans had their convention, the polls gave the Republicans more weight. That's why Palin made such an immediate difference in the polls; the Liberals were not all that impressed with her, but the Republicans were happy and with a bigger share of the weight their response was magnified. I can't prove it, since the Gallup people do not invite me into their strategy meetings, but I think somewhere they are weighting the party ID by the mood as they see it. The problem there, is that such weighting is still very subjective, and what's more it fails to consider that someone may consider themselves a member of one party with respect to the House and Senate races, but something else entirely when it comes to voting for the President. The state of Oklahoma, for example, is a very Democratic place, but it's pretty solid for McCain, just as it was for Bush. So weighting a presidential poll for party identification on the basis of how they think someone will vote for Congress, is going to miss the mark.

Anyway, going back to my earlier piece on party weighting, if we go back and look at the historical track record for the last ten years in terms of self-identified party affiliation from actual exit polls, we see a clear standard of weights; 38.4% Democrat, 35.8% Republican, 26.0% Independent. If we then work them out to fill the liberal/moderate/conservative slots used by Gallup, the following weights have historical validity and may be used as a constant for poll responses:

Liberal Democrat 9%
Moderate Democrat 16%
Conservative Democrat 13%
Independent 26%
Liberal/Moderate Republican 23%
Conservative Republican 13%

If we apply those weights to the poll response, here is what happens to the Gallup polling responses:

August 21: Obama 39.94%, McCain 43.43%, Undecided 16.63%
August 28: Obama 40.04%, McCain 43.60%, Undecided 16.36%
September 4: Obama 41.06%, McCain 41.77%, Undecided 17.17%
September 11: Obama 42.04%, McCain 42.45%, Undecided 15.51%
September 18: Obama 39.62%, McCain 45.71%, Undecided 14.67%

Movement still happens in both sides' support, but it is more gradual and is consistent with events in both parties. Frankly, it is only reasonable to expect that Democrats largely support Obama while Republicans largely support McCain, and even now there is a significant amount of indecision; between one of six and one of seven voters are not sure who they want. Most of that doubt is with independents, whose support may make all the difference in the key states. Further, the stated levels of support are within the statistical margin of error. It is also interesting to note that both Obama and McCain, in general, are gaining support incrementally, with gains gradually reducing the undecided portion (at the present pace, however, the undecided portion of the vote would still exceed ten percent of the total vote). The latest support level for Obama, statistically, appears to be an outlier, so his next poll may be expected to reflect stronger support. If Obama is in fact losing support, some specific reason would have to be found - it is not reasonable to expect support to diminish without a clear cause.

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