Web polls… Can you trust them? Well, shoot, everyone knows they’re not scientific, so of course not! It’s a popularity contest, that’s all, and only by the demographics that actually visit the website. Why even bother asking the question!
Well, to be honest, I get irritated when my point of view isn’t winning. But hey, it’s a web-poll. They are generally reflective of the demographic of the website’s visitors. And if they reflect the visiting demographic, we can know if we are a part of that website’s majority-clique, right? Well, no, there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest this. But it’s kind of like wishing someone luck– we all know it won’t help anything, but we do sometimes think it will in the back of our minds– consciously or not.
So, why am I bothering to even talk about this subject; it’s rather mundane, isn’t it? Well, yes, at least I thought so until I was roaming around on the web after the third presidential debate. Being the open minded person that I am, I visited one of the well known left of far left websites– the Lewinsky inspired MoveOn site. And I saw something there that the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) would have been proud of. This website is actually engaged in stuffing the virtual ballot box (as unscientific as web-polling is); there was a page dedicated to filling out the online polls of all the major papers and political sites and advising to go talk up Obama (not provide your true opinion). Take a look for yourself: http://pol.moveon.org/lte/
So what, you ask? Well, you’re right– so what! However, it does make me wonder if this kind of stuffing being observed at these rabid-left websites is a foreshadowing of what we’ll see come November (didn’t you read the news about the 200,000 problem registrations/ballots in Ohio?). And I’m not talking about the Thanksgiving dinner.
DS
28 October UPDATE! 200,000 questionable in Ohio, and now 140,000 suspect registrations in PA!
