No, this isn't more poll results. This is another thing. I believe it is referred to as a "diary". The following represents my own damn thoughts, my own damn opinions, and my own damn conclusions.
Now if anyone else is tired of shiny objects and numbers and quotes being dangled before your eyes, telling you how to feel and how to vote and how to take a crap....
You can take a break by following me beyond the orange squiggly thing.
First question:
Who the hell are these pollsters talking to?
My 57 year-old brother disconnected his land-line last month. He has a wife and two kids and lives in the suburbs of St. Louis. I wouldn't call him conservative, but I wouldn't call him a flaming liberal either. He just decided he didn't need it anymore. He gets his internet through the cable. They all have personal cell phones and I think he has another just for work. They didn't need a land-line. He called for some service because of a problem. Didn't like the service guy and the charges he was paying so he told the guy to just take the line out.
I'm fairly positive that neither he nor his wife has talked to any pollsters up to now, because they both are not into talking to strangers who call them up at suppertime. And they both work, so they weren't answering that land-line during the day, either. I'm sure both of the kids would love to vote for Obama, but they are not old enough yet.
And they damn sure are not going to be answering any land-lines now.
I was talking to some friends last night at the local pub (well, it's kind of Irish) in southern Arizona. We got to talking to the youngish bartender who talks to a lot of the "kids" at the local U. None of these voters have land-lines. Many, if not most, don't even have internet connections. They go to places like coffee houses or tap into the neighbor's wireless. This bar we were at just put in wireless because the "kids" were clamoring for it. They want to check their facebook and twitter while they're relaxing with some suds. They want to do their homework in the cloud while they are relaxing with their suds.
I don't think they are answering any land-lines either.
I've taken polls in the past, but not for quite a while. I'm home all day, but I won't answer my cell and I won't answer my land-line (what the hell do I have that thing for anyway?) unless I recognize the number. I figure that if it is important, they will leave a message. Seems to work. I get about 5 to 7 phone calls a day that I don't answer, DESPITE THE FACT THAT MY PHONE NUMBER IS UNLISTED!!!!
Pollsters don't leave messages.
The first time you participate in a poll, it's novel. The second time, it's sort-of mildly tiring. The third time, you just say no and hang up.
Or at least I do.
Who are these people? Is there a certain group of people who answer every time their phone rings, no matter who it is? No caller ID???
Actually, last week I took my wife's car in for service and spent 90 minutes waiting for it in the customer "lounge", a rather euphemistic term. I think there was a woman there who does answer her phone every time no matter who calls. She seemed to have no problem talking to the person next to her non-stop for 65 minutes in an inappropriately loud voice. Unfortunately, in 65 minutes she said absolutely nothing that indicated even the slightest amount of intelligence, wit, or judgement. And the poor person next to her only got in about 17 words in total. Fortunately I was able to spend the last 25 minutes in relative peace because her car got done.
I would imagine she would answer the phone, but would she really like to listen to a good five to ten minutes of questions requiring short, usually monosyllabic, answers after a question that lasts for what must seem to her, a real "talker", forever?
I would imagine she would like to talk a bit longer between questions to have a truly enjoyable experience....
Which brings me to the next question:
Who are these people the pollsters are talking to and how many hours are there in a day?
I know, 24 hours. But certainly these pollsters are not calling when the local time is between 10 pm and 8 am. Who would take a 10 or 15 minute poll after 10 pm local or before 8am when you are rushing out the door for work?. So that knocks it down to 14 hours. We will ignore time zones for simplicity. In each time zone there are about 14 hours to get this done.
Ten hours of which are during the day and four hours of which are in the evening when working people are trying to eat and relax and watch the tv or whatever.
Who is home during the day?
People who work at home and people who don't work at all because they: a) can't find a job; or b) don't need a job.
I know a couple of people who work at home. They are usually pretty busy and it doesn't seem like they would be inclined to answer a phone call from someone they don't know and even less inclined to "waste" 15 minutes (including the infamous "likely voter screen") talking to a stranger on the phone. at least not more than once or twice until the novelty wears off.
I don't imagine people who can't find a job are very happy right now. I can guess they would be in favor of a change. They are probably pretty happy to have a chance to vent their anger and talk to someone who wants to talk to them.
I'm not sure what people who don't need a job are thinking, but if they don't need a job then what are they doing at home and why would they waste time taking a poll? If they have plenty of money, I would think they would be out at the gym or shopping or on vacation or whatever.
Why would anybody in their right mind take time out of their day to respond to a pollster?
Of course if they are not in their right mind, then they are probably Republicans.
Wait a minute, do pollsters these days PAY for interviews? Because if they do, I guess I would be at least tempted to do it maybe one more time. Maybe they have a list of people who get paid to answer and get a check every week.
Would that be legal and/or ethical? Because it might be effective and it might explain a lot....
I've done phone-banking during the day for the local Dem party. I generally work for 2 hours. If I got 10 people to even answer their phone during that two hours, I was lucky. If even 2 or 3 of those people would talk to me, I was really lucky. That was out of maybe 100+ calls.
Bear in mind that all I had to do was give a very short spiel that didn't include but one or two questions.
I could tell what was going on around me and it sounded like everybody else at that phone bank was having the same kind of "success" rate.
It is extremely rare to make a cold call and get someone who will talk to you and actually engage in a conversation or even answer a couple of simple questions. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times it has happened to me. Even people who were sympathetic to the Democratic Party would often just tell you they were voting for your guy and then excuse themselves because they were busy.
And who is the person that has been out working all day and comes home hungry and tired and will sit still for a ten or fifteen minute interview (including the "likely voter" screen)? I guess I would do it if I had an axe to grind. Which people of which party have an axe to grind right now? I would imagine a lot of bigots and racists have a pretty big axe to grind and would be delighted to sit through a telephone poll if they thought somebody was actually listening to their hate-filled answers....
Here's something else. Back when I was answering the phone I would get these "push poll" calls where they would subtly try to influence your vote by asking who you were voting for and then calmly asking you if your vote would be the same if you knew that your candidate was into necrophilia and having sex with animals. I mean, is that a "scientific poll"? Did they just throw my answer out because I answered "wrong" and then hope their "push" would change my mind?
And what about the ones where they call you and simply ask if you were voting for candidate X and then hang up? Does that mean they thought I was voting correctly? Nothing to see here, move along? Did that mean they ignored my answer because it wasn't correct? Were they just calling to see if I was alive? Did they identify their polling results as "scientifically" or "statistically" correct? What the hell?
So, at long last, who ARE these people these pollsters are talking to?
I don't know. I can't figure it out. People who have never taken a poll before and are just thrilled to be taking part in one? People who are very unhappy and want to tell someone about it?
Who are these pollsters not talking to?
People who are busy. People who are working. People who have no land-line (that would be young people and my brother, at a minimum). People who have a cell phone and have a life. People who are fed up with getting anonymous phone calls during an extremely long election season. People who are not at home or are busy because they are GOTV. People who use their caller ID to screen their calls. People who figure that if this anonymous phone call is important, the caller will leave a message.
Who exactly does that leave?
Please, as I stated at the beginning, I am running with my gut here, not my analytical scientific organ sometimes referred to as a brain. It seems to work well for Stephen Colbert's on-screen persona. Why not me?
But here is a semi-logical argument for you. This is a close race, allegedly it will be decided somewhere in the range of less than one point to maybe 2 points, so something like 51% - 49% or closer. That's what all the polls are indicating, right? Well except for Gallup, but don't worry, they will be the same as everybody else at the end - they have to preserve their "record".
Now I seem to recall dimly from my "scientific" schooling and career that if you flip a coin 100 times, "statistically" it is most probable that it will land with heads up 50 times and tails up 50 times. Or 49 and 51, or 48 and 52. All of these outcomes being "statistically" and equally "likely" for all intents and purposes, "within the margin of error" if you will. As a matter of fact, even a result like, oh say, 52 tails and 45 heads (and throw in 3 times landing on its edge) is a "statistically" "likely" result (well, not the three times landing on its edge, but you get the idea).
So how do we know that instead of spending bazillions of dollars hiring pollsters and buying phones and computers to "run the numbers" that they just don't have some guy in a room flipping pennies day after day after day and reporting those results as a "scientifically and statistically valid poll"????
After all, it would be the same results we are seeing, wouldn't it????
If you leave a comment to try to convince me of the soundness of polling or try to use any math or statistics on me, I will not respond.
Feel free to waste your time trying.