Crashing Online Polls--Sometimes You Just Gotta Say: "What the Heck?"

Simon Owens has published an interesting article on PBS.org. A week or so ago PBS published an online poll asking whether Sarah Palin was qualified. I had been alerted about the poll via e-mail and posted the e-mail on this blog. I also voted. Simon points out that FreeRepublic had posted a message that "conservatives" (I consider myself a Jacksonian radical, but "conservative" will do) should crash the poll, and that's probably how I heard of it (i.e., indirectly from one of the many Freepers whom I respect, admire and turn to for advice). Learning that conservatives were crashing the poll, Professor PZ Myers of Pharyngula mounted a counter-offensive. Myers is a scientist who correctly points out the many biases and threats to the validity of online polls.

Myers says:

"If you look at the major networks' coverage of the election, for instance, what you find is that they turn it into a horse race...All they report is who's ahead, who's behind and by how much. It is distracting and detracts from the coverage of the actual issues."

Issues? What issues? When was the last time you heard discussion of monetary policy on PBS? Probably in 1836, when Jackson was still president.

However, Joel Schwartzbert of the website that ran the poll does not claim that online polls are representative. Article author Owens points out about the Palin poll I crashed:

"To date, more than 50 million votes have been registered on the poll, both from constant freeping and from bots running rampant and falsely inflating the numbers. Eventually, NOW changed the poll to track a user's cookie so they could only vote one time per computer."

Maybe the guys over at PBS haven't heard of Webroot's Window Washer. Sorry to break the news to you, Simon, but no cookie is going to be able to stop the Freepers!

Given the extreme biases in the American news media I would not make much of an issue out of an online poll. In fact, I would claim that if Fox, CBS, NBC, PBS, etc. permitted online voting as to whether the viewers think that the announcers are full of baloney, the instant feedback would improve things.

Social Conservatism Not a Decisive Issue in This Election

The Wall Street Journal and CBS News report that Proposition 8, mandating that marriage between a man and a woman, won 52-48%. In contrast, President-elect Obama won in the Golden State by 61% to 37%. A bill restricting abortion rights for minors (requiring parental notification) lost by 52-48%. It is true that, as Paul Rogers points out in a Mercury News blog:

"Two of the main anti-abortion ballot measures in the nation failed. Voters in South Dakota rejected by a margin of 55-45 percent Initiative 11, which would have banned abortion except in cases of rape, incest or serious health risk to the mother. And in Colorado, they trounced Amendment 48, which would have defined life at the moment of conception. It failed by 73-27 percent."

Despite the failure of anti-abortion proposals, it would seem that the economy and the Iraqi War rather than social issues received voters' attention. Although restrictions on abortion failed, elimination of gay marriage succeeded in California, which someone once called "the land of fruit and nuts". It would also seem that advocates of abortion rights might begin to feel more comfortable with state-by-state determination of the extent to which abortion will be permitted rather than a sweeping Supreme Court decision.

George Phillips's Loss Is Ulster County's Loss

Joe Bubel has an excellent post on his blog. Joe notes:

"Our media-driven society accepted Obama by word only, and that is enough for them. And, there just aren't enough people left, who expect more than just words, to counter the droves of 10 second sound byte Obama followers at the polls. Time will only tell, if Obama can deliver the Christmas he promised.

"There will be those who will gloat. There are those who say to me, and others like me on the blog world, we are a blue county in a blue state, time for your 'kind' to move...So I say, I have the FREEDOM to live where I Like. You, however, are tied to where the government can take care of you, or you need to bring the government to you, which you have been doing quite successfully in Ulster County."

Sadly, Ulster County and the rest of New York's 22nd Congressional District has overwhelmingly voted another term for Comrade Maurice Hinchey, Congressman Price Control, who advocated price controls on gasoline earlier this year and never saw a socialist system he didn't wish to emulate. The 22nd district is gerrymandered to include Binghamton, Ithaca, New Paltz, Woodstock, Kingston and Poughkeepsie. They managed to slice in more than a half dozen colleges, Vassar, Marist, two SUNYs (New Paltz and Binghamton)and Cornell, plus Woodstock, home to trust left wing trust fund babies and rock stars. George Phillips mounted a noble campaign but lacked support from Ulster County's Democratic media and 2001 invasion of New York City liberals. The Obama-McCain debacle contributed as well.

Let us hope that George continues his noble efforts in pursuit of this Congressional seat.

Meshugina Kopf--Jewish Vote To Obama

Gateway Pundit (h/t Larwyn) blogs that 77% of the Jewish vote went to Obama. In contrast, the majority of the white vote went to McCain. American Jews have a history of following "progressive" fashion even where it means danger or death to their fellow Jews. In the 1930s and 40s the Jewish-owned New York Times did report on the Holocaust, but it buried the story and America's "progressive" Jews did little to demand to Roosevelt that the train lines to the death camps be bombed. In 2008, few Jews have asked whether Obama's links to Price Prince Al-Waleed or to various radical causes might in turn raise questions about his attitudes toward Israel or how he would respond to an attack on Israel. This is a tragedy. I hope the circumstances that I fear will not occur.