Notes on blogging and this election (and more on the phenomenon of “oversampling”)
I will be extremely unhappy with the results of this election, no matter who wins.
But one thing I will be extremely happy about is that the election will finally be over. Finally, after what seems like years.
Short of a 2000-type brouhaha, that is.
I’ve noticed recently that things have heated up, both on the internet and in the non-cyber-world, during this past week especially. Everyone seems testy and on edge. My liberal friends in particular are terrified that Hillary might lose, because even if they don’t like her (and many don’t like her), they feel Trump is a very dangerous man. And on this blog and others, sniping in the comments section between people on the right has increased even more than before.
There’s a general weariness that is almost palpable. I feel so weary of discussing the pros and cons of Trump vs. Hillary that I could scream.
And as I wrote that last sentence, it occurred to me that “the cons and cons” would be a much better phrase to use.
So forgive me—or thank me, as you wish—if I don’t post my near-daily Trump/Hillary discussion today. The next week promises to be a lulu, and that’s about all I’ll say right now on that score.
I also find myself spending more time lately in the comments section here, responding to various people. Often the research I do for those comments requires as much time as the research I do for a main post, and yet far fewer people see a comment than see a post.
So now I’ll take the opportunity to offer the gist of one of those previous comments in order to give you more information I found on the topic of “oversampling” (as discussed previously vis a vis the Podesta emails). Hope this will clarify things even further.
“Oversampling” is a technique that is sometimes used in certain types of polls and research in general to study small groups. Here is an explanation of what it actually means.
Oversampling is the practice of selecting respondents so that some groups make up a larger share of the survey sample than they do in the population. Oversampling small groups can be difficult and costly, but it allows polls to shed light on groups that would otherwise be too small to report on.
This might sound like it would make the survey unrepresentative, but pollsters correct this through weighting. With weighting, groups that were oversampled are brought back in line with their actual share of the population ”“ removing the potential for bias…
. When we are interested in learning about groups that make up only a small share of the population, the usual approach can leave us with too few people in each group to produce reliable estimates. When we want to look closely at small groups, we have to design the sample differently so that we have enough respondents in each group to analyze. We do this by giving members of the small group a higher chance of being selected than everybody else.
A good example is a Pew Research Center survey from June of this year, in which we wanted to focus in depth on the U.S. Hispanic population. In the previous survey from March, there were 291 Hispanic respondents out of 2,254 total respondents, or 13% of the sample before weighting. This is pretty close to the true Hispanic share of the population (15%), but we wanted to have more than 291 people responding so we could do a more in-depth analysis. In order to have a larger sample of Hispanics in June, we surveyed 543 Hispanics out of 2,245 total respondents, or 24% of the unweighted sample. This gave us a much larger sample to analyze, and made the estimates for Hispanics more precise.
If we just stopped here, estimates for the total population would overrepresent Hispanics. Instead, we weight them back down so that when we look at the whole sample, the share of Hispanics falls back in line with their actual share of the population. This way, we still have more precise estimates when looking at Hispanics specifically, but we also have the correct distribution when looking at the sample as a whole.
That’s an explanation from Pew Research of what the technique is and how it’s used in polling.
So it does not mean biased sampling or skewed polls in an attempt to fool anyone. Also, these polls Podesta was talking about were not polls that were released to the public. They were internal polls that had the purpose of studying certain small subgroups in certain areas, so that the campaign could learn more about them.
It’s possible to think, because that article by Pew that I just quoted was written after the Podesta emails came out, that it was just some sort of ex-post-facto made-up excuse. So I refer you to articles about oversampling in small populations that were written significantly before this election cycle, and therefore are not responses to Podesta and aren’t trying to make any political points at all.
Here’s an article about using oversampling in small groups, written quite a while ago (the comments there date from 2015, but according to my Google search the article was written in 2012).
Here’s some information about oversampling in small populations that was written in 2010.
Here’s an example of some type of study from 2011 that used oversampling (it’s not about politics).
There are other examples of research that uses oversampling as a technique to study groups that are a small fraction of a population. This information is easy to obtain, and has been in the public domain for a long time.
Once you are aware of what the technique of oversampling of minority populations is, you understand the Podesta emails better. His emails fit into the framework of what is being described here, and do not appear to have anything to do with faking data or deceiving anyone.
As I’ve stated before, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t attempts to deceive, either with polling or in other ways. It merely indicates that there’s no “there” there in these particular charges about Podesta and the use of oversampling.
Nice Wikileaks email from Podesta today describing his former lawyer as having “kept ne out of jail.” That’s an admission against interest. He belonged in jail and he knew it.
For the sole reason of never having to see or hear from Podesta (the criminal) again, I’d vote Trump.
What is the rationale for overstudying what Pew calls “small groups”?
“Oversampling [is] a technique to study groups that are a small fraction of a population,” Pew explains, as cited by Neo.
How small is “small”? Is 15% of the population “small”, as in Pew’s example of polling Hispanics?
In oncology, we do not think a 15% risk of having cancer in lymph nodes is a small enough risk to leave those untreated.
Do such oversampling polls really deliver a “more in-depth analysis”, as is claimed?
Analyses are after all quite different from data. Polls are about data.
I think the true reason for oversampling, then adjusting to normalize the “small” sample, is in the economics of polling. Too many phone calls just cost too much.
On the other side of the coin are the “focus groups”, tiny clusters of people whose opinions cannot have any statistical validity whatsoever, yet Frank Luntz and others make a fine living off of them.
Neo,
The problem with oversampling, assuming they then reweight correctly, is financial not intellectual. Our society is much more heterogeneous than it was when the statistical justification for 1000-1200 respondents was made in the 1940s.
This means more groups and as you pointed out, if you are just sampling 200-300 of a group, getting the “wrong” 40 or 50 people can really queer the results. The need to oversample even applies to so-called majority groups, as whites, both men and women, are less homogeneous than they were in the 1950s.
The practical effect of this is the need to sample 2500-3000 people to get more defensible results. That adds time and money to the surveys and limits the ability of the survey companies to move with events instantaneously.
If the polls had this degree of oversampling, then it is likely the gap among polls would be lower.
Grenouille,
Focus groups are referred to in the trade as “peasants under glass”
Interesting new article here on polling and why we are seeing big swings…
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/01/why_polling_swings_are_often_mirages_132225.html
The tl;dr version…
“Such turnout swings are fundamentally difficult to predict. If turnout patterns are similar to 2012 or prior years, Clinton should win by about the same margin that Obama won by in 2012. This is because we aren’t seeing enough Romney voters switching to either Clinton or third party candidates to generate a double-digit victory for Clinton. Clinton was probably never leading by double digits, nor has she fallen as far as some recent polls suggest. The truth is more prosaic: Most voters knew how they were going to voter before the campaign began, real swings are rare and usually fairly small.”
Not sure yet I agree with it all, but it is interesting, as it does raise some good questions about polling.
Also, wrt “weighting”, that article argues past election votes is under used and provides a more solid predictive base.
“Nice Wikileaks email from Podesta today describing his former lawyer as having “kept ne out of jail.” That’s an admission against interest. He belonged in jail and he knew it. “ – Cornhead
Heard that phrasing many times as a joking way of saying the lawyers present are, or need to do their job in representing your interests. So now it shows up in an email.
Oh boy!!! Some admittance of guilt!
Cornhead, since you didn’t provide a link, I googled it.
Top of list…
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/11/01/kept-jail-podesta-buddy-helping-investigate-revisited-email-probe/
Well, waddayaknow… Brietbart is on it.
I am inclined to be rather suspicious of dems, but this desperate line of “look, look, here’s more proof now!” is getting ridiculous.
If the podesta email is enough to go on, then maybe this should be a huge deal too…
Trump’s server communicating secretively with a Russian bank server…
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
Yah, let’s run with it.
Frog:
If an election is close, minority groups can be a big and important part of what affects the outcome of an election, and Democrats find these groups very important in the overall picture.
This is in internal polling, as I’ve indicated before. Internal polls are used as a form of market research for each campaign; they are not made public, and they are not used as propaganda but for information-gathering purposes and to figure out where to put a campaign’s resources, and how to tailor the message to the group in question.
You may be correct that oversampling is a way to save money in polling. I don’t know.
Mumbo jumbo got ya.
Whats 1 x 1.1? Answer: somewhere between 0.475 and 1.575.
The precision of the answer is always determined by the least precise measurement. The factor “1” is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5. The 1.1 is somewhere between 0.95 and 1.05.
And no, taking averages over a number of samples does not give a more precise answer.
The mumbo jumbo presented by Pew and others is pure BS for the innumerate.
Got it.
Oversampling is ok for small groups like registered democrats.
In 2008 the split was 39% D and 32% R. (Roper Center)
In 2012 the split was 38% D and 32% R. (Roper Center)
In 2016 D enthusiasm for 2016 is 43% while R enthusiasm is only 53%. (Wash Post)
So polls showing a sample of D’s 38% to R’s 28% (Wash Post) seems reasonable.
By the way that Wash Post poll has Trump at 46% and Clinton at 45%.
Tuvea; Roy Lofquist:
Tuvea’s examples are not examples of oversampling as used for small groups as part of internal polling. What Tuvea is describing is something completely different.
And to both Tuvea and Roy Lofquist—do you really not understand the post and the information in it? Or are you just pretending not to?
Roy Lofquist—as I demonstrated in the post, “oversampling” is a technical term used by pollsters, as well as researchers in other fields, when dealing with small groups. The term and the technique long predated the Podesta emails, and are not used to deceive anyone, and are not used solely in political polls. I should think that’s clear, and certainly not “BS for the innumerate.”
Oversampling is fine. It’s the other 99% of his emails I have a problem with.
Big Maq:
Sampling in political polling—in particular, predicting turnout and getting the right sampling based on that—can be fiendishly difficult.
I wrote a post about that in 2012, here.
@Neo – right, and is a good reason not to trust one specific poll or pollster, but to take the average – e.g. RCP Average.
One of the problems that may affect all polls, is the fact that telephony use patterns have changed, and reaching some segments of the voting public is becoming increasingly difficult (e.g. caller id and phone screening).
Neo,
They can give it any name that strikes their fancy but that does not make it meaningful in any way.
A sure sign of BS is the introduction of arbitrary “adjustments” to get the desired answers. You simply can not torture more information out of data than is inherent in it. If a sample size gives you +/- 10% that is the most accuracy you’re going to get no matter how you manipulate it.
The fact that some people make a living from peddling the stuff is irrelevant. Consider the number of people who will pay more for tap water in a bottle than they pay for gasoline.
@Big Maq,
No, that average is not any more reliable than an individual poll. I refer you to Richard Feynman’s commentary on the Millikan oil drop experiment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment#Millikan.27s_experiment_as_an_example_of_psychological_effects_in_scientific_methodology
As to the difficulty in reaching the public:
“The percentage of households in a sample that are successfully interviewed — the response rate — has fallen dramatically. At Pew Research, the response rate of a typical telephone survey was 36% in 1997 and is just 9% today.”
http://www.people-press.org/2012/05/15/assessing-the-representativeness-of-public-opinion-surveys/
Roy Lofquist:
If it’s statistics in general you’re arguing about, and how valid statistics using adjustments are, that’s a different topic than what Podesta was talking about when he talked about oversampling.
If you disagree with techniques used by pollsters that they themselves believe are valid, that’s one thing. But it’s not what’s under discussion in this particular post. But “adjustments” such as oversampling for small groups are common statistical practices/technniques designed not to fool anyone, but because pollsters believe they are valid.
Neo,
You’re right. I don’t WANT to understand your post.
And I don’t WANT to understand why that same Wash Post poll where Clinton was +12 a week ago now has Trump +1.
Just data noise.
Nothing to do with the reality that Clinton is going to win by the same percentage that Obama did in 2012 even though fewer Dems are still enthusiastic enough to bother voting.
Neo, math is math. Try to understand Roy’s points. Are pollsters mathematicians? No. Not even close. I do not care what adjustments pollsters claim are valid.
An “average”, as in the “RCP poll average”, is just plain crappy when applied to polls. No one uses the more meaningful “median”.
“Nothing to do with the reality that Clinton is going to win by the same percentage that Obama did in 2012 even though fewer Dems are still enthusiastic enough to bother voting.”
I know a lot of Republicans who have voted R in every election of their lifetime who are not voting for Trump. And a square ton of Republicans who probably will vote for him but are just as unenthusiastic as Democrats are.
I don’t have any idea what will happen. But – and this has been said a hundred times – I remember 2012 and the “don’t believe the polls” meme. I tend to believe the RCP average and I have a lot of respect for the accuracy of guys like Nate Silver.
But this is a strange year. And Hillary is so bad. Maybe Trump will win.
It will be fun talking about if the polls were right or wrong in a week (unless we have some nightmarish tie)
Frog – Maybe I’m naive (wait! Don’t answer that!) but I believe people that make a living polling actually want to be accurate for all sorts of professional, personal, and financial reasons. Our country isn’t as full of wide-eyed left wing suicide bombers (that’s a metaphor, only a metaphor) as many people seem to think.
A polling firm that has a good run of accurately predicting election results is taken more seriously in the future, given more weight, gains in revenue and reputation. One who is consistently wrong gets to experience the opposite of that. Think of the pundits who predicted a Romney landslide in 2012. They aren’t getting as much run this election season, that I can tell you
Doesn’t mean the polls are right. But I believe the people gathering the data and producing the results are *trying* to be right.
The tell-tale is when a campaign constantly complains about the polls until suddenly there’s a poll that shows them ahead. That poll then becomes the standard of truth and beauty. Funny how that is.
There is only one poll that counts, on November 8. And I understand campaigns telling people to ignore the polls and vote – what else are they supposed to do? Keep hope alive and Dewey defeats Truman and all that.
[Sorry for the long rant here] Everyone thinks they are an expert in polling and statistics, and can clearly see what’s wrong with this poll or that poll. As someone in a technical field (software development and data analytics) I find it amusing when people who don’t know what they are talking about talk about the technology I’ve spent thousands of hours learning and practicing.
But the main point is that the point of Neo’s post wasn’t about whether the polls are lying about Hillary versus Trump.
And – trust me on this – if the RCP average shows Trump with a 3% lead next Monday, you all will think it is the epitome of golden truth.
Frog, math is math. Try to understand my points. Are pollsters mathematicians? No, but the pollsters who design the structure and analytic techniques used in polls need to be highly trained in math, and math is the basis of their sampling techniques. If you do not care what adjustments pollsters claim are valid, then you’re not interested in having an intelligent and informed discussion on the topic of what is meant by “oversampling” when pollsters use the term.
What’s more, oversampling is not something that’s just used by pollsters. It’s a statistical technique used by other researchers as well. I don’t want to tax your seemingly limited intellectual curiosity about oversampling, but did you actually follow the links in my post? One of them was this, describing a study by the CDC in which oversampling was part of the design:
Of course, you may think all such studies are suspect, as well. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is what Podesta was referring to in his emails, and the common misunderstanding that it involved polls such as the ones the public sees in political races rather than internal information-gathering polling.
By the way, for what it’s worth, I studied statistics at the graduate student level. I certainly don’t hold myself out to be an expert in the field, but I know a great deal more than most people do about it, and I know many people (and talk to them about their research methods) who work at the PhD level in statistical fields.
Tuvea:
Well, if you’re not interested in understanding what I’m talking about, I guess I won’t waste further time trying to clarify it for you.
However, if you want to understand what you’re talking about in your comments at 10:02 PM and at 7:35 PM, you really ought to read this. It will shed some light on why it is that sampling varies.
By the way, I’ve never said anything other than that polling is flawed and imperfect. But much of the time, pollsters are trying their best to do something that is inherently difficult, and to get it right.
@Bill,
You are correct, the pollsters mean well. They are honestly trying to be accurate, sometimes. But as Frog noted they are not mathematicians.
Statistical analysis assumes that there are rational (in the mathematical meaning) causes that produce predictable effects. If that is not the case then the results are an artifact of the statistical method employed.
SA is not applicable to chaotic systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
Chaos is the bailiwick of Loki, the trickster. These systems have been the ruin of many a poor girl. In many of these systems we find “islands of stability”, called “strange attractors”. They look fairly well behaved but you can’t predict when the system will jump to another one. This is why a particular pollster will do well for a bit then lose it.
Polling ranks right up the with the I Ching and astrology as reliable tools.
“Polling ranks right up the with the I Ching and astrology as reliable tools.”
Really?
In my experience the polls have been very accurate in predicting the winner of our presidential elections. For a specific example I think Nate Silver has mis-predicted one state in the last two elections.
They were accurate in 2012
They were accurate in 2008
They were accurate in 2004
Same for 2000, 1996, 1992, ……….
I could go on. Look at this site if interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_U.S._Presidential_elections
If Trump followers want him to win, they’d do well to quit bellyaching about the polls and get out there and present a positive case for voting for him. My opinion
Also – to be fair, it’s true that they weren’t accurate in 2000, when it comes to the popular vote. But that was a razor-thin margin. They did accurately predict the ultimate winner.
Are pollsters mathematicians? No. Not even close.
You are making up stuff here. This is the equivalent of saying “Are bankers economists? No. Not even close.”
Sure not every pollster is a trained statistician, but large polling organisations employ extremely well trained staff, with many of them statisticians.
Polling is big business and as such is done by professionals. They pay handsomely to get the best too.
It doesn’t take much searching to find jobs for statisticians at polling organisations. As my daughter is part way through a degree in statistics, I have an interest in this sort of thing.
I stand corrected by Chester Draws, forgetting that Gallup and the other biggies are fairly large organizations.
I earlier reacted reflexively, thinking about all the talking heads that are called pollsters, like Shoen on Fox. The talking heads are the rainmakers, not the statisticians.
Statistics and the use thereof is not a walk in the park.
When something has a P value of .0.05, it is deemed statistically significant (only one chance in 20 of not being causally related, for example). But 0.06, nope.
Standard deviations get the same treatment. Greater than two sigma, big deal. And those are just the rudimentaries.
@Bill,
My experience differs. The first election of which I have a clear memory is 1948. My dad was elated that Truman beat Dewey, contrary to the polling.
As I explained in my comment about chaotic systems, there can be periods of stability but you never know when they begin or end except in retrospect. If you look at the polling era, begun in 1948 by George Gallup, the polls have been wrong often enough as to make them less than dependable.
@Chester & Frog,
Yes, statistics is/are very complicated and require quite a bit of talent and effort to master. But, like many specialists, they often don’t recognize that some problems lie outside their discipline’s domain. “To the man with a hammer everything looks like a nail”.
I believe that it was John Wanamaker who said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is that I don’t know which half”. The polling companies’ primary business is trying to answer that question. Elections are an advertising expense to them.
Roy Lofquist:
In 1948, political polling was even cruder and more error-prone than it is today. What went wrong:
Neo,
I am very familiar with all of the reasons given for the lack of accuracy in the polls. The problem is that they are different each time. It’s whack-a-mole. The electorate is different each election. The world is different. The system doesn’t stay the same long enough to develop an accurate methodology.
After a few seasons a farmer can look at his field and guess how many bushels to expect. If he changes the crop to beans his guess is not going to be as good.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb developed the Black Swan Theory. He was mainly concerned with big events, those unpredictable events that change the world. In real life, our own personal lives, black swans are common. Our stories don’t follow the script. That’s true for each and every one of us. We are not predictable. The error bars are huge. It’s all very gray out there and trying to predict what’s going to happen is but a parlor game.
Roy,
No, a farmer does not look at a field and expect how many bushels to expect and switch or not switch to beans. It is a lot more complicated to decide how much of what to plant, far more complicated than you imagine. Stick to your day job. Just friendly advise from an Iowa farm boy and a holder of Iowa farm land. If you own farm land let someone with experience manage. And, stay away from investing in the commodities market. Good place to lose your shirt.
Basically, analogy fail.
@Parker,
Terrible analogy, agreed. I was just trolling you (cough-cough). What I know about farming? I tried a couple of pork chop bushes once but that didn’t work out.
I wouldn’t touch commodities with a ten foot Lithuanian. I knew a couple of guys who had seats on the exchange in NYC. Nice, but strange.
It’s kinda tough to come up with analogies for some fairly abstract maths.
Thanks Neo, your post is both informative and objective. It did not purport to be a thorough discourse on the complexities of polling strategy or effectiveness, and I did not read it that way.
“If you look at the polling era, begun in 1948 by George Gallup, the polls have been wrong often enough as to make them less than dependable.”
I did look at the polling era. That’s the link I posted.
1948 is significant because the polls were so wrong (and they quit polling too early – neo did a good summary upthread). And that was in the pre-cambrian era of modern polling. 1948 isn’t normal – that’s the point.
I do appreciate the distinction between a valid method used in polling, and outright rigging of the results.
That is not what’s important.
The fact is, the Rabid Left (trademark pending) has dug their own grave. They have lied so often, and twisted what little truth they uttered, that the reflexive response of the rest of us is to distrust them. At this point, a generation may have to pass before the Left can regain some level of trust from the general population.
The Left used their access to power to:
– enact the most culture-destructive rules, regulations, and interpretations possible
– use taxpayers’ money to indoctrinate schoolchildren
– sue, with the goal of bankrupting opponents
– spread lies, rumors, and illegally-accessed information – all without pushback from the media, political parties, or other politicians
– use the executive parts of government to impose Leftist goals they could not have gotten passed legislatively
– weaponize the IRS and other agencies against their enemies
– operate under different rules than the other parties – without penalty
– use a scorched-earth strategy – if they can’t win, destroy the country
So, no, I’m not surprised that defensible words are mis-construed, and used against them. They have brought this upon themselves.
@Roy Lofquist – Reading through your several posts on polls, it seems you are trying to invalidate the average of polls because a) individual polls can be wrong; b) there is the occasional Black Swan as Nassim Talib describes (I know this well).
If that is not what you are saying, please correct, as I am trying to boil down a complex discussion to its essence.
But, if I am correct, neither is really a good reason to reject out of hand the RCP average.
Who’s ahead in national presidential polls means not very much to me. That ignores the Electoral College. The RCP “average” makes that even worse. I do not look at it.
A understand you neo, but we also understand that the left criminality is smart enough to wrap the wrong in ambiguity which you can then and they did no wrong…
You are looking at something that can or can’t be illegal and your ignoring the 100 plus years of pedigree, behavior that is legendary, their belief that there is no such thing as morals, and the idea that the way to do things is to avoid honesty, manipulate with ambiguity, hiding things, collective action (we used to call conspiracy before the CIA games the NY times revealed), and more
Plausible deniability….
Your basically acting the same as the fox who gave the scorpion a river ride…(and ignoring you live in a mliue that had told you what to think and what right thinking is for 50 years.. Or haven’t you noticed then getting us what to think of an Indian human costume, or what to think about Trump, and always couching it that your neanderthal if you think otherwise??? Soviets Google at his GULLIBLE nice professional people are and complicit in their own destruction!!
The top people are the best at this game…
And they love that you will waste time being the reasonable person who will always side on goodness even if the person is not good…
By the way, you are doing the same thing that liberal court now does in negating a person’s life and behavior as being pertinent to a case… This was something that feminism brought to court so that the behavior of the victim had no bearing…. So now a woman can press someones buttons endlessly… But if the person responds in kind, that’s verbal abuse… They lose the bike, business, half of their lives effort, and more…. It can be very profitable to press buttons though one risks more violent outcomes
What to you would constitute evidence and his stupid would a Harvard educated person be to show you that level of stupid… Podesta said the emails that suits their criminal action should be dumped.. but we are not supposed to use their criminality to show they lean to the criminal
Wish you would read the stuff from the people about his to game things without getting caught!!!! I watch them pay off protesters a few blocks away from the protest in manhatten more than once a month…
But if your wanting for a recieot, good luck
The idea about being a criminal is about avoiding saying anything to blatant…
Right now I’m attending a presentation by the FBI
They seem to differ in their take on criminals being subtle with the best being the best at it
Some are so good that their crimes went underfed in front of the FBI until their light came on… One reason example being the smuggling of pure audiobook to be sold as vodka and avoid taxes and import duty…
And another is a joke and used as plots
Jose arrives at the Mexican border on his bike with 2 huge bags over his shoulders. The guard stops him and asks: “What’s in the bags?”
“Senior, It’s only sand.” replies Jose.
“Sand??? Well, we’ll just see about that – get off the bike!”
The guard takes the bags, rips them open, empties them out and finds nothing in them…except sand. Detaining Jose overnight, the sand is analysed, but only to discover it is in fact simply sand.
Jose is released, the sand is put into new bags and placed on Jose’s shoulders, and he is let across the border.
Next day, same thing happens. The guard asks: “What you got there?”
“Sand,” says Jose.
A thorough examination of the bags again shows there to be nothing but sand, and subsequently Jose is allowed to ride across the border.
For a whole year this continues until one day Jose doesn’t show up, and the guard discovers him in a Cantina in Mexico.
“Hey, Bud,” says the guard, “I know you’re smuggling something. For a year it’s driven me crazy. It’s all I can think about… I can’t get sleep, the kids are getting neglected…heck, even the dog senses I’m beginning to lose it! Between you and me, just what are you smuggling?”
Jose sips his beer, smiles and replies: “Bicycles…”
By the way
You won
There is no way for me to build a response
If it’s the size of your point, yu cut it
It would be kind of like the defense being unlimited and prosecution limited to much fewer words… So can’t build and kind of meaningful response that would be able to stand up to retort
There are lots of legal things that are criminal when slightly different
If Bernie madiff was a pollster, would you trust his sampling?? Why?
By the way, you forget I with with liberal researchers whom I do the math work for and watch how they game science and peer review with these same things
Their behavior is basically it’s not illegal or dishonest it the end justifies it… And being high IQ, they are subtle about it
I also work in a field in which I deal with activist hackers, insiders, spies, and more… Which is why I’m with the FBI this morning…
Duh duh duh
It is as if Marx’s ‘doctrine’ of hating the family, religion and patriotism, has taken hold of our culture,31 and that Lenin’s shocking declaration that, “Children must be taught to hate ……” had been uttered with our children in mind.32 There is certainly no doubt that Lenin’s other demand that only ‘politically correct’ opinions be allowed has been swallowed by the majority of the West’s political elite.33
But what is even more shocking is the fact that hidden from public view many of our university students have been exposed to both subtle and blatant forms of this ‘teaching’ for decades
(Snip)
Since then generations of college students have been profoundly influenced by activists like Jerry Rubin who boasted of using them to undermine the West’s values in the 60s cultural revolution. “We’ve combined youth, music, sex, drugs and rebellion — and that’s a combination hard to beat.”
Snip
Lenin, who invented the concept of’ ‘political correctness’ to control his Bolshevik followers,35 directed his key protégés to find other ways to take power and the first one he turned to was German activist Willi Munzenberg.
Snip
Virtually unknown today Munzenberg had a special talent to organise activists and sympathizers to further the communist cause.
Snip
He believed there were enough of those who Lenin called ‘deaf mutes’ who could be turned into ‘useful idiots’ and lead the West’s population to such a state of despair and anarchy they would welcome their totalitarian regime to restore order. It would be the West’s future cultural leaders, its students, who would be indoctrinated with so much hatred for western capitalist society by neo-Marxist teachers infiltrating its universities that they would be the unwitting catalysts for an eventual communist takeover. And even though Stalin probably had him killed in 1940 and tried to write him out of Soviet history, Munzenberg’s role in this campaign has been critical, as Stephen Koch writes:..
Willi Munzenberg was the first grand master of two quite new kinds of secret service work, essential to this century, and to the Soviets: the covertly controlled propaganda front, and the secretly manipulated fellow traveler. His goal was to create for the right-thinking non-communist West the dominating political prejudice of the era: the belief that any opinion that happened to serve the foreign policy of the Soviet Union was derived from the most essential elements of human decency. He wanted to instill the feeling, like a truth of nature, that seriously to criticise or challenge Soviet policy was the unfailing mark of a bad, bigoted and probably stupid person, while support was equally infallible proof of a forward-looking mind committed to all that was best for humanity and marked by an uplifting refinement of sensibility.
To create his networks of fronts and fellow travellers Munzenberg used every resource of propaganda, from highbrow cultural opinion to funny hats and balloons. He organised the media: newspapers, film, radio, books, magazines and the theatre. Every kind of “opinion maker” was involved: writers, artists, actors, commentators, priests, ministers, professors, “business leaders” scientists, psychologists, anyone at all whose opinion the public was likely to respect.
They did not leave out polling…
They have had a century and it yu look there are iconic families that have been working since then…Jarret family, odinga, Ayers, etc
Although Munzenberg created the template for much of today’s political campaigning he kept his actual agenda secret. He exploited his supporter’s ideals to eradicate poverty and establish true justice. He seduced them with the belief that their political activism would save the world when they joined what he called his ‘Innocents Clubs.’ And being ignorant of his real agenda M?zenberg managed to manipulate their political commitment into support for the alternative religion of international communism
End…
The whole point was to do things in ways that honest good people would want to assume the non criminal… This has been his they operate and have studied and evolved to be successful
As the people who are worried and concerned are innocents and ignorant that the social contract they are relying on for their assumptions under plausible deniable ambiguity is to sue with nice, honest, as they would want for themselves
Munzenberg was not the only one to respond to Lenin’s directive. Other key figures in the conspiracy included Lenin’s personal Politburo representative Karl Radek
Snip
Lenin also fully endorsed Nechaev & Bachunin’s revolutionist principle that: “One should conspire with the liberals in accordance with their programs, pretending that one follows them blindly, and at the same time one should dominate them … compromise them to the utmost … and then use them for stirring up disturbances in the state.”
Without the foundation, the basically born yesterday and hatched from an egg and by the time you learn it figure it out it’s too late… How close to the end of the republic is it now??? Well everything they are pushing, and literally everything, is making us weak and dysfunctional
And the leaders know this stuff
The innocents won’t believe and won’t change their look into bitten real hard… But if there is only one bite, the impetus to learn was the final strike, and there is no next move
Learning a mushroom is deadly after eating it is a perfect analogy and you are it because you ignored the negative warnings, did not want to read and learn, and used feeling and stuff that is being exploited against you playing on your goodness…. As you ate… And learned the hard way…
Of course any one highly educated had to agree to pass to they internalized this and use it in there views and assumptions… You can’t swim in dirty water and come out clean…
But in the movement’s beginnings M?nzenberg set up many apparently respectable aid organizations and publications. Ironically these fronts for furthering international communism made him so rich he became known as the ‘Red Millionaire.’ He presided over a huge organisation which included both legal and illegal activities and he or his agents manipulated notable fellow travellers like Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, André Gide, Bertholt Brecht and Dorothy Parker, as well as spies like Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt
While companies we now respect and falsly believe they are good, are what we are trusting… To the point where the hacker criminals are more honest than entities like pew..
After all, neo used pew to explain oversampling
Except the entities involved are old and communist related and none of them were pew…
Anything that can manipulate the public view has been compromised to the end even if it’s just people acting out their education that was compromised way back…
@Big Maq,
One poll says Jones is up by 2. The other poll says Smith is up by 2. Tied? If Jones is actually up by 10 (both polls goofed) then the average doesn’t come close.
All of the pollsters use the same methodology with variations in the adjustments they apply. If, and I’m not saying this is the case, but if they are all wrong in the same direction then the average is not the correct answer.
This is called a systemic error. History offers many examples. As in a prior comment I refer you to Feynman and the oil drop experiment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment
By 1937 Munzenberg became an anti-Stalinist and a marked man. In 1940 he was found dead in a forest near Grenoble, probably hanged by Stalin’s secret police the NKVD. The same year Walter Benjamin committed suicide while fleeing the Gestapo, but his criticisms of mass culture were translated into English and he became widely read and lauded in America’s colleges in the 1960s.
Even be changed at the end but we never got a chance to read his reasons… He was removed before he could lead a counter revolution…
Michael Minnicino states in his Fidelio article The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness, ‘Today, the men and women who run the networks, the ad agencies and the polling organisations, even if they have never heard of Theodore Adorno firmly believe that the media can, and should, turn all they touch into “football.” Here he also points out that, ‘The technique of mass media and advertising developed by the Frankfurt School now effectively controls American political campaigning.’
It would take hundreds of pages to lay out this stuff
It’s all known by this that have read what I have recommended over and over by dropping names, saying read this, and instead… Everyone is trying to figure out the rules of the game by watching and with no references and refusing to learn the game itself
No no don’t tell me should be the cry of this group
And like the narcissist there are no limits to the long term ambitions of international cultural Marxists. As described in Skousen’s The Naked Communist published as long ago as 1958 they aim to:
weaken the traditional family,
attack the authority of the father while promoting the importance of the mother,
lead schools to present sex outside marriage and homosexuality to young children as ‘normal, natural and healthy,’
undermine the moral authority of traditional schools and teachers,
promote excessive drinking,
infiltrate and empty the churches,
infiltrate political parties,
replace revealed religion with ‘social’ religion,
promote an unreliable legal system with bias towards the offender,
gain control of and dumb down the media and state education,
promote continual change,
encourage mass immigration to destroy national identity,
encourage dependency on state benefits
Does this list pesky look like the dems platform???Have to go… It’s my turn soon to present at the security conference
Sorry… But there is a lot that is never discussed here
Either they are afraid to talk about it
Or they are ignorant and using imagination to full in the blanks to get to the wrong answer all the ignorance and innocents agree is right
Take some time to learn what is like to live under such manipulation
Going from not having it, to having it, is much like eating the poison mushrooms
“Who’s ahead in national presidential polls means not very much to me. That ignores the Electoral College. The RCP “average” makes that even worse. I do not look at it.” – Frog
You are correct that the EC is what counts.
The RCP has also been taking the average of state polls to determine what the current state is.
As of this moment clinton stands at 246 ec votes, where the local polls have her up by a relatively wide margin. That is 24 ec votes short of what she needs to win.
trump stands at 180, leaving 112 ec votes from swing states.
This means he pretty much has to “run the table” on those swing states to win (90 of 112). That is a tall order for states that are supposed to be “swing”.
In VA, she is leading by 4.7 points – that is 13 ec votes.
In CO, she leads by 2.4 points – 9 ec votes.
In NH, she leads by 4.7 points – 4 ec votes.
There is no question the race it tightening up, and no doubt trump has a “possibility”, but it is definitely against the odds.
Don’t forget, you have to factor in the GOTV operation. I’ve seen where it can add anything from 1% to 5% advantage. Unless the trump campaign has greatly improved, they will have to make that additional distance up, as the average of polls do not account for it.
Also, don’t forget that the MSM prefers a “horse race” vs a blowout. If we believe the media has the power to influence the race with their biased reporting, we have to understand that this might also be a factor in what we see.
@Neo – temporarily saw a “Bad Gateway Error” message when posting the above (thought I lost it). FYI.
@Roy – look, I understand that there is a “margin of error” with every poll. But, that is why looking at an average of polls is superior.
Does it mean it is absolutely correct? No, and not arguing that either.
But, it is the best representation we have to know what the present reality is. They are not to be completely discarded, but to be taken with an understanding of their weaknesses.
I’ve seen some here who go to websites and do “quadratic” trend analysis on the estimates they find there, and that is foolhardy and misleading.
You might better focus your fire in that direction.