The Billiken's Bluff

There are a lot of young and impressionable billikens of voting age who read this website and I think N. Dotty may be misleading them. Today Dotty included not one, but two links to a Real Clear Politics poll, filled with red and blue bar graphs, that is supposed to signal the end is nigh for John Kerry. Just yesterday, I was under the impression that Ohio was a swing state, but Dotty's illustrative poll cleared up my misconception. According to Real Clear Politics the old lady in Akron is wearing red.

However, not all the polls (and there are many polls) are in agreement. One poll last week had President Bush leading Kerry by 13 percentage points while another showed the candidates tied in the U.S election race. Looks like someone is cooking the books.

MoveOn.org placed this full page ad in Tuesday’s NY Times questioning the accuracy of the Gallup poll.



The Gallup poll is considered one of the most esteemed bar graphs out there. The Gallup poll of likely voters has Bush leading by 14 percent. MoveOn points out that Gallup has refused to fix a longstanding flaw in their polling method. Gallup's poll doesn’t accurately account for the number of registered Democrats and Republicans in the US. Gallup’s polls go on the assumption that Republican turnout will exceed Democratic turnout by 6 to 8 percentage points. However, exit polls at the last two presidential elections have shown that Democratic turnout exceeded Republican by 5%. That discrepancy alone can account for the 14% Bush lead in the Gallup poll.

I'm no statistician but to use George W.'s catchphrase, that sounds like some fuzzy math. Actually, come to think of it, Bush orated that memorable one-liner during the presidential debates against Al Gore in 2000. Bush went into those debates as the clear underdog. Bush performed well in those debates and as we all know went on to win the 2000 presidential election (even though he had 500,000 less votes than Gore, but who's counting?). The debates can greatly swing public opinion, and yet my opponent, N. Dotty, would quote a poll taken before the debates and claim the election is over?

Additionally, George Gallup Jr., who heads Gallup Polling and is a devout Evangelical Christian, was quoted a few months ago as saying that:

“the most profound purpose of the polls is to see how people are responding to God.”

See, that’s the exact answer I put on my NYU Statistics Final and my professor marked me wrong, saying that divine intervention had little or nothing to do with statistical polling.

Polls do not only measure campaigns, they also affect them. If one candidate starts trailing in the polls, some of his supporters may become demoralized and decide not to vote. That's exactly what N. Dotty wants you to do. He wants you to think the election is over, he wants you to stay home. He may even try to steal your absentee ballot. N. Dot, enough with your politics of fear and intimidation.

As part of my effort to keep my ear to the street I just conducted an exit poll of my apartment building. Surprisingly enough, it looks like neither the Democrats nor Republicans are leading.



The Green Party with a decisive edge. (+/- 3%)