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November 03, 2004
Sneaky, secretive Republicans lied to pollsters!
A lot of people are lambasting the exit polls for obviously flawed methodology. I just saw Frank Luntz on Fox News, and he explained the problem: people don't want to tell the truth about how they voted. Instead, they tell the pollsters want they think the pollsters want to hear. They hide, and if confronted, they lie! It reminds me of the absence of Bush signs around here, and (apparently) even in Republican strongholds. My take on this? If secret voting were abolished, the Democrats would win. (It's a point I've made before.) Why should Republicans be allowed to hide the truth? What are they ashamed of? (Not a bad question, actually, but I'm quite outspokenly against shame.) UPDATE (01:38 p.m.): I just heard Dick Morris opine that the exit pollsters simply lied in order to suppress the turnout for Bush. MORE (06:25 p.m.): I now see that "bloggers" are to blame for the bad exit polls! "I think people believed them, and it's particularly the case with Internet bloggers," said Kathy Frankovic, CBS News' polling director. "That's unfortunate because it sets up expectations that may or may not be met. I think it's a good exercise because it reminded people that early exit polls can be unreliable."It may surprise Ms. Frankovic, but I actually knew that information from other sources can be, yes, unreliable! (It's a major reason I blog, believe it or not....) What I didn't know before today is that bloggers are to blame for the unreliability of information that falls into their hands! This whole time I thought we were here to share it, comment on it, and maybe learn whether it's true. MORE (And this really ought to be the Quote of the Day): Perhaps people were ashamed to tell exit pollsters they'd voted for Bush; I would have been leery of doing so in my polling place, which resembled a Kerry campaign rally.-- Megan McArdle, guest-blogging at InstaPundit. AND MORE (11/04/04): Now (according to this WaPo report) there's a new explanation; the results were only "preliminary." At least they've stopped blaming "the bloggers"! posted by Eric on 11.03.04 at 08:15 AM
Comments
Well said, Portia; that really ought to be a post! I think fear and shame are interrelated, though. (Many people live in dire fear of public shame.) Eric Scheie · November 3, 2004 10:51 AM I think we are all just going to have to come up with another way to analyze why people do the things they do. I know that I no longer have any patience at for any kind of survey that is imposed on me. At work, I get a lot of calls for the engineers I work with, from magazines that want to give them free subscriptions. By law, they have to get certain demographic info in order to give them for free (so that they can't inflate their circulation, presumably). I used to do the phone renewals for them - my time is not billable at $125 an hour. But then the magazine callers all started asking for MY personal info - where I was born, what color my eyes were - apparently because they had to provide some kind of proof that they had talked to a real person instead of making it up. This really creeped me out. I lied to them - I just didn't want to be giving out my birth day or birth month or eye color or where I was born or any of that stuff! It just really annoyed me. Now, I don't take the calls anymore. I don't let them talk to the engineers either - I tell them our company policy is that we don't accept phone calls from magazines, they are welcome to mail a renewal. (And it is company policy, because I made it a policy! What god-given right do they have to eight minutes of my time? Times 14 engineers, times 20 different magazines?) Anyway, I know I'm rambling, but for heaven's sake we need to find some other way to get all this precious info that everyone is so desperate to analyze. I guess that's my point. Just too darn much intrusion in all areas of life. Stop the madness! Teri · November 3, 2004 10:51 PM Once again, I have to inject shallowness into this serious conversation, but: darn it, lying to pollsters is i>fun! Buncha gol-durned busybodies. Persnickety · November 4, 2004 04:04 PM |
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We're NOT ashamed. We're AFRAID. I don't know if there's more vicious thuggery on the left than on the right -- this election there seemed to be -- but there is more of an assumption that everyone on the other side is either stupid or amoral. If I had a yard sign, no one in the neighborhood would talk to me, the kids would get harrased and pets might be at risk. If it came out in my place of work, I might be on the next round of layoffs (to explain better I'd need to go private email.) And yeah, if a pollster had asked me while neighbors were within earshot I would lie. I don't give a damn about shame and I'm known for unpopular opinions, but I can't afford to lose my livelihood.
If democrats want us to stop hiding they should start by assuming we're human beings as they are, with different opinions from theirs and not some mythical, evil beast.
Sorry -- it's a sore spot.