Skewed Polls

Happened to see what I thought was a link to presidential poll results while wandering around on the Internet. It turned out to be a poll on how you'd vote by Polling Point. I had a minute or two, was curious, so I took the poll.

They gave a lot of scenario: If this Democrat were pitted against this Republican who would you vote for? Are you conservative, moderate, liberal? Democrat or Republican? Lots of questions related to politics plus some demographic questions.

All fine and dandy, pretty clear cut questions until it got to one where they asked which Democrat you would vote for if that were your only choices.

Now keep in mind that in every other question involving voting for candidates there was the option of "not sure" or "would not vote."

In the question regarding which Democrat would you vote for they listed all the potential candidates and then additional option "Not Sure".

So, I was forced to say "not sure" or pick one of the Democrats if I wanted to continue with the poll.

It won't come as a surprise to anyone who reads my columns regularly that I vote Republican. My answer would have been, if given the choice, "would not vote."

That question was completely out of whack with all the rest of the questions. Any answer would make it appear that as a voting Republican I would vote for a Democratic candidate.

How many people opted for "not sure" and how many just decided to pick what they considered the one they felt would do the least damage? Accurate results? Nah. No way.

There was a place for comment at the end, so, of course Ms. Opinionated Me left a comment. The group that put that poll out there are professional pollsters. They knew exactly what they were doing. I wasn't telling them anything they didn't already know. I'll know when I hear some media type hyping the fact that some number of Republicans would vote for Richardson or Biden or Obama that they tricked them into the answer. So will you.

I'm heading over to http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html. I'm going to do their Candidate Calculator to see which candidate they think lines up most closely with my views.

It should be fun, but... who's the one that decides what the candidates will actually do or how they feel about the subjects I'm going to see on the calculator? After I run through the drill, I may pop back over here and write another blog. Or I might save it for another day... it's a Saturday night and there's a presidential candidate debate in one hour... oh boy, four whole hours of listening to candidates try to steer clear of making a gaff. What better way to spend a Saturday night?