The rush to convict in the court of public opinion does smack of trial by mob, and then the mob moves on to something else, leaving scorched earth and ruined lives behind the torches and pitchforks. It’s not the system of justice we profess to believe in, though there is a lizard-brain immediate satisfaction from it.
I agree, although I think there are exceptions where it’s a logical move. For instance, what if your head PR person suddenly had some scandalous things come out? It would be impossible for him to do the job he was hired to do until they were decently resolved. In the same vein, I’d argue politicians are logical to use this approach with. They’re representatives of the people and entrusted with tools that can move proverbial mountains for the nation. If something has caused that trust to be eroded to a substantial degree, then they should likewise step aside until that trust is no longer so shaky.
It’s not fair. In no way, shape or form is it fair. But that’s life/politics.
Pyperkub
1891
And yet, she can’t call him out by name? Rather cowardly, Condi…
Former U.S. Secretary of State and Birmingham native Condoleezza Rice today urged Alabamians to vote in tomorrow’s special Senate election…
…"I encourage you to take a stand for our core principles and for what is right. These critical times require us to come together to reject bigotry, sexism, and intolerance.
And that’s it. Scary.
Strollen
1892
I think it may be, more effective that she didn’t tell people who to vote for but rather describe the qualities that Alabamians should be looking for in a Senator. By most accounts, Alabamians don’t respond well to that.
As in the recent, article which said that if the Washington Post warned that Antifreeze was poison, scores of Alabamians would die from drinking it the next morning.
orald
1893
Nate Silver no longer has juice he used to but I thought this a useful summary of the kinds of polling and why the swings can sometime be so great.
I fear momentum has been with Moore and Alabama’s voter ID law will provide his margin of victory, though I hope that I am wrong.
Timex
1894
On some level, other than reducing things to a sports event, why do we care about polls at all?
Sure, for people actually running campaigns, polls can impact what you do… But for just normal voters?
Polls don’t mean anything. They shouldn’t impact what you do, at all.
People like to be on the winning side, I suppose. Non-industry people also shouldn’t care about movie box office, either, but apparently it’s important to see the movies that ‘everyone is seeing.’ Or it’s just the idle interest of observing horse races.
Nesrie
1896
Movies aren’t a fair comparison. Sometimes I care about how a movie did simply because I want a sequel or hope to see more. If ticket sales are terrible, i can just be thankful for the one movie but let go of any future hope.
CraigM
1900
If that venue were to, say, fall into the ocean, I wouldn’t be terribly upset.
Menzo
1901
The fact that it didn’t is proof enough to me that there is no god.
Timex
1902
It’s like the legion of Doom, if you replaced all of the villains with some form of Bizzaro.
ShivaX
1903
They shouldn’t, but they do. If someone says “Moore is up by 10 points!” Well, then you can maybe stay home and not vote. He’s going to win anyway and you didn’t have to vote for a Democrat, crisis averted. At this point polling is a form of manipulation in a lot of ways. Any time a poll is way outside the norm it makes me wonder what the actual goal is. I’ve heard of polls recently showing both Moore and Jones leading by 9-10%, which says to me someone out there is trying to manipulate things by making one side or the other just not bother to show up to the polls.
Timex
1904
And then Trump becomes president.
ShivaX
1905
Exactly. I’m fairly sure someone has the numbers on how it all works and is using it to help their team win.
Read the 538 article posted upthread today. It explains pretty clearly how:
- Alabama is tough to poll, and
- How different polling methods create the divergence of opinion we’re seeing on this race.
FWIW, Fox News’s polling outfits are very sound methodologically. For this poll, they enlisted two very reputable and respected polling outfits to work together. One is a Democratic outfit, the other a Republican outfit. And their crosstabs and sampling methods are beautifully transparent. Now, they may have gotten Doug Jones +10 because people don’t want to tell a live interview pollster that they’re voting for a pedophile – that’s legit – but they’ve rolled very solid and smart methods into their opinion collection.
The difference in results due to if you query cell phone users is very interesting. Automated polls can’t call cell phones (it’s illegal at least there) and of course land line usage tends to skew much older and whiter.
Everyone is sampling populations in Alabama. The question is how representative any of the polls are of the actual population.
(I know you know @triggercut, pointing out of few interesting bits for people who didn’t read the fine article)
Oh, and the reasons news orgs love polls is that they’re view generators. The make clicks. Clicks make $.
The modern news cycle demands information constantly to make clicks. If nothing of note is happening (and stump speeches are kind of dull to cover from a news perspective) the way you satisfy the hungry monster is to report on polls. They get PR for the pollster and clicks for the news orgs.
