Conspiracy theories are fun though.
Think how boring this election would be without them
Wikileaks: The polls are rigged
- Thread starter AK-47
- Start date
Think how boring this election would be without them
Here's an example of media propaganda as discussed in wikileaks memo. CNN is trying to give the appearance that the election is over already:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/24/politics/hillary-clinton-transition-planning/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/24/politics/hillary-clinton-transition-planning/index.html
Oldjones, if the media report that Clinton is winning, and she is, the media aren't responsible for her win. If the media report that she's winning, and they know she isn't (or they know they are stretching the credibility of the data to make the claim), then Clinton may end up winning, in part due to the influence of the media. The media's opinions reach a lot more people than yours or mine, and they have motivations for their support of candidates that don't mirror the interests of the general public.
I'm not bothered by the notion that someone can pay for polls to be conducted that favour their side, and the other side can criticize those polls as well as commission their own. However, if the media refuses to cover opposition to one side's slanted polls, the public is not well served. The only way for the opposition to get that message out is to spend more money than the deceiving side by buying more campaign ads. Further, if one side pays for 10 polls and the other 3, it would be misleading for media to simply average the 10 with the 3 and claim all of the bias has been removed by averaging!
I'm saying that this practice is wrong, and voters should know about it. I won't argue with you that in politics lots of dirty tricks are played, this one included. However, I think the public is better off when they understand when they've been misled.
Like it or not, the public counts on the media to be their watchdogs over the political process. Most people don't have the time to fact check political speeches or expose corruption. If the media are not going to fulfill these functions with the best interests of the public in mind, who will?
It kind of makes you wonder how long it's been 1984.
I don't have to wait for a study to confirm human behaviour that I see every day. As an example, it's very clear here in Canada that most people support Clinton. I see that by how comfortable Clinton supporters are about openly criticizing Trump (unconcerned that they might be speaking in front of Trump supporters), and how unwilling Trump supporters are to publicly criticize Clinton without first confirming that they are speaking to another Trump supporter. It's human nature to avoid conflict. No study required. If you're not willing to spend the time to investigate the progress of an election for yourself, you will get your information from the media about which side is more popular/socially acceptable. It's no accident that the Democratic campaign is so closely coordinated with so many media outlets. They know the media can be opinion MAKERS.
Below is an alternative explanation of what "oversampling" means. Note, the email in question was from 2008 and my quick perusal and searching of the other wikileaks emails resulted in no newer references to oversampling.
In order for Clinton and the Democrats to pull this off, they would have to conspire with most major media and polling agents to rig the election by oversampling democrats within each polling sample. It would take 1000s of people to be in on this scam and they would have to remain silent for the rest of their lives. Possible - yes. Likely - IMHO no.
What about polls commissioned by the GOP themselves? Even Kellyanne Conway (Trump's campaign manager) who is a professional pollster is now admitting they are starting to fall behind significantly.
With the understanding that this approach is designed to demoralize Trump supporters and discourage them from voting at all, it's a super risky approach with no guarantees, if Trump supports are as fervently loyal as they appear to be, they will get out and vote. I think the opposite is the truth; Trump knows he is losing the election and there is significant risk it's going to be a landslide and the GOP could potentially lose the house and the senate. Trump is creating FUD in order to rally his supporters so that the GOP can maintain some control by keeping one of the two.
+++++++++++++++++++
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/138010/no-donald-trump-not-losing-oversampling
http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/24/no-the-polls-arent-biased-clinton-really-is-leading-trump/
No, Donald Trump is not losing because of “oversampling.”On Monday morning, Trump flagged a ZeroHedge story (that had been previously flagged by Matt Drudge) alleging that the reason Trump is down in the polls is because the Clinton campaign conspired to rig polls by “oversampling” Democrats.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrumpMajor story that the Dems are making up phony polls in order to suppress the the Trump . We are going to WIN!
8:44 AM - 24 Oct 2016
13,651 13,651 Retweets 30,853 30,853 likes
This is an outstanding tweet. The double “the,” the use of the third person—top shelf stuff. But it’s also bullshit. Here’s the relevant portion of the WikiLeaks email from Tom Mattzie that ZeroHedge claims is about public polling:
I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling.
The email is from Clinton’s 2008 campaign, which you may recall did not turn out so well for her. But Mattzie is not talking about the kinds of polls that show Trump is losing big league, to use one of his favorite phrases—those polls are done by pollsters in concert with media outlets. Instead, he’s talking about polling that campaigns do internally to decide how to target voters.
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump, who has an excellent explainer on what is (most likely) going on here, writes: “Mattzie’s talking about polling that’s done by campaigns and political action committees to inform media buys. In other words, before campaigns spend $200,000 on a flight of TV spots, they’ll poll on the messages in those ads and figure out what to say to whom and then target that ad to those people as best they can.” The oversampling portion of the email, Bump goes on to explain, refers to the fact that it’s often difficult to get the right sample sizes: “Normal polling in a state will usually have no problem getting enough white people in the mix to evaluate where they stand, but you may need to specifically target more black or Hispanic voters to get a statistically relevant sample size.” In this instance, Mattzie is probably referring to “Native Americans and Democrat-leaning independents and moderate Republican women.”
Could the polls showing Clinton with a sizable lead be wrong? Sure. But not because they’ve been rigged by the Clinton campaign.
Setting aside that there is actual evidence of coordination between the DNC and many media outlets to support Clinton's candidacy, as set out in the DNC primaries WikiLeak, you don't actually need a conspiracy for like minded people to engage in behaviour that supports one another.
People like to trot out the term "conspiracy theory" to discredit any claims in relation to sophisticated activity that is either co-ordinated or simply aligned. Put more simply, it's not a conspiracy that millions of squirrels gather nuts for the winter, or that someone would help a fellow airline passenger get their overhead luggage when to do so assists them in getting their own luggage down more quickly and/or safely. People behave in concert when they have the same motivations, or they co-operate where there is obvious mutual benefit.
The media appears to prefer a Clinton presidency. They wouldn't need the Democrats to explicitly tell them that emphasizing those polls which favour Clinton would advance that interest.
If it were provable that the Dems actually directly controlled an outlet like CNN, or explicitly co-ordinated this aspect of election strategy with them, that would be further evidence of the corruption of the process, but the more salient point really reverts back to whether the polling has any integrity, or whether polls have been cooked for the sole purpose of influencing undecided voters.
I believe your point is completely valid and it needs to be made. In this age, it's easy to quickly manipulate data, however it's still very difficult to keep human conspirators silent.
Other than a vague 8 year old wikileak email (which could have been modified), what proof is there that this manipulation is occurring? Did you read through the Email attachment? There is NOTHING in it that shows democrats were targeted over republicans, it's clearly about targetting voting groups (ethnic minorities, women, etc)
The Republican polls are also showing Trump as losing. Kellyanne Conway (Trump's campaign manager) who is a professional pollster is now admitting they are starting to fall behind significantly.
You certainly have a gift for smoothly stating a subtle truth, then twisting it to support your out-there positions - I mean that as a compliment, I'm guessing you may be a pretty good lawyer. But I'm not buying your conclusions on this one.
What evidence? The OP's 8 year old wikileak example provides NO evidence of manipulated polls, if anything it clearly shows the polls in 2008 are above board. Do you have collaborating emails or other evidence? In order for it to be useful to manipulate the election, it would have to be from the last 6 months. A witness? What about the GOP's own polls which seem to be mirroring the results of "suspect" polls? No way Kellyanne Conway (a professional pollster) would buy into a false poll, the woman is just too damn smart to let that happen.
So far all evidence I've seen indicates that the 8 year old email is exactly what it appears to be.
Why do you feel the media prefers a Clinton presidency? Trump has been GREAT for newscast ratings!! I rarely watched FOX, CBS, ABC or CNN news before Trump came on the scene, but now that he's here I'm glued to various newscasts for an hour a night. If anything it's in their best interests that Trump wins as they will have tons to report on till he's impeached. Good or bad news, Mr Trump will keep a lot of news people employed and us citizens watching. With Hillary, it will be more of the same boring crap and most of us will be back watching sitcoms and reality TV.
A one sentence world is so much easier, isn't it? You needn't worry, all I was saying is that you failed to make any of your four points. Don't sweat the details.
I've highlighted assertion that need some evidence if you want them accepted. Particularly your last one, which is really incongruous in a post claiming to be about scientific polling and it's mis-use. My anecdote against yours.: Mostly I encounter vociferous Trump supporters who are first discomfited when I or someone else says they don't support him, and then go from loud to belligerent in their responses. So where do you find your 'most Canadians who support Clinton'?
But you need to support your claims that the media know Clinton isn't winning, that they don't cover Trump's slanted polls or anyone else's (Note: Nothing offered in this thread remotely proves anyone's polls are slanted), that any candidate wins because of the media, (or should they somehow win without them?) and that the public — which is full of voices shrieking MSM are liberal dupes — counts on the hugely varied spectrum of professionalism and opinion that is summed up in your term media to be any sort of watchdog. Unless by watchdog, you mean a critter that starts up yapping for no apparent reason and forces you to go see for yourself if anything's actually wrong. As you and others on both sides have been doing. So what's wrong?
I think you meant police, not watchdog, for sure there's a whole lot of yapping in this campaign, about evenly divided by and for both candidates If anyone's getting away with anything it isn't for lack of watchdogs. Can't say the same for the follow-up 'investigations' though. 'Vindictive, amateur' only barely begins a long list.
I've asked before and ask again: How would you fix things? How would you achieve your standards of politically correct media and polling, where you say they're now lacking?
Stating a fact that is true and then drawing a conclusion from it by applying sound reasoning is called logical analysis.
You seem to have missed the point of my post by a wide margin. What I said was that the WikiLeak relating to manipulating polls is, at best, a side show. Embarassing on some level, but not the main point. The real point is whether the polls are, in fact, cooked. The disparity of the polls suggests something is up, but that's not enough for a conclusion. We probably won't know how accurate they are until election day. However, the media should not be making bold pronouncements about the size of Clinton's lead based on selected polls, or even an averaging of what appear to be flawed polls.
Why do I think the media prefers Clinton? Several reasons:
1. These media outlets are all owned by large corporate interests. Large corporate interests are backing Clinton in this election, because she will not upset the apple cart that allows them to succeed currently.
2. Trump loathes the press, and openly criticizes their integrity.
3. Clinton plays the game by the rules the press are comfortable with. Trump plays by his own rules. The media aren't enamoured with the prospect of having to learn a different way of interacting with the administration.
I could probably come up with more, but these are reasons enough.
96% of disclosed campaign contributions by journalists went to the Clinton campaign. No bias there folks!
Stating a fact and then trying to correlate it to nonsense, still results in nonsense. Which is exactly what you did.
You failed to address the fact that the GOP polls closely match most MSM polls.
You failed to address the fact that Kellyanne Conway appears to be accepting the information in these polls as fact.
You continue to state unsupported theories and try to pawn them off as facts. Sorry, not buying it.
After having read the Wikileak email and the attachment and done some research I judge the Email as harmless. Certainly no proof of intent to mislead the public. I see no proof in this thread of collusion on the part of the press (whether coordinated or not).
I expect every political party in the last 50 years have performed targeted polls, they would be foolish not to. If the GOP and Trump were to release their emails, I'd expect we'd find exactly the same type of content to the OP's Wikileak.
A weak and dated argument. Trump lives for the press, he plays to the press, he encourages the press. He's trying to manipulate them and it's not working, so he's whining conspiracy.
Let's look at this another way. Did Trump and the GOP not realize all of this ahead of time and plan for it? If not, once they saw their approach was failing miserably, why did they not re-strategize and attempt to engage positively with the MSM.
Trump created this problem for himself, now he's just looking for an excuse to not take the blame for the position he's in. It appears he's not only going to lose this election, he's going to do significant damage to the GOP's power base. Further he's already done serious damage to the Trump brand. I fully expect his daughter will further distance herself from him. His wife can already re-reviewed the pre-nup.
Trump getting killed in NC early voting:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/10/democrats-leading-big-in-nc-early-voting.html
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/10/democrats-leading-big-in-nc-early-voting.html
What are you talking about - GOP polls? What are they? The private polling done for the GOP? Do you have access to those? I don't. If you're referring to polls favourable to Trump, some of those show him in a tie or slight lead.
What Kellyanne Conway agreed to in her interview was that "they are behind". What did she mean by that? 1%? 2%? 5%? No one asked her. Those numbers would be within the margin of error, and could be easily overcome by differences in turnout. She clearly took issue with the polls that claim Clinton has a large lead. Those large lead polls are the polls that the media had been regularly citing over the previous few days, as they attempt to convince the public (for the 4th time in this election) that Trump is finished.
I don't know whether you read posts as well as write them, but if you did you would know that I agree that this particular WikiLeaks regarding creating biased polls is not that significant. A minor embarrassment at best. We already know that a number of networks are co-ordinated with the Clinton campaign to get her elected (no further proof required after WikiLeaks number 1, and any objective analysis of media coverage since), but even if they weren't, the DNC would obviously pay some pollsters to produce polls which help their case, as I would expect the RNC to do.
Trump certainly wants media coverage, but he doesn't want all that coverage to be negative. That's what he's been getting pretty much uniformly from the entire MSM during this election. The media likes to say "but Trump creates all of these negative stories that dominate his coverage". However, that's not credible. When Trump gives a 45 minute speech about what he will do in his first 100 days, and talks for 4 minutes about suing his accusers, that should not result in coverage that is 100% about suing his accusers. Frankly, I don't even know why the latter is newsworthy. It's a given. His plan for the first 100 days was entirely new campaign material, and should have garnered the majority of coverage of that speech. The analogy would be if I responded to your post by focussing on your silly comment about Trump's pre-nup, instead of the substance of your comments, simply because you mentioned that point. "Promo promoting marital breakup!" "Promo is against keeping families together!" See how easy that is?
Incredibly, despite all of this co-ordinated attempt by the media to sway voters, this thing is still close. It must really be true that the public holds little trust for the MSM any more.
My honest answer is "everywhere I go". However, I will concede that most of my daily contact is with people who would be considered part of the political and financial elite. However, I'll throw onto that pile the Canadian media. I've yet to hear a strong Trump supporter in that group, despite listening to plenty of talk radio. I might find more Trump supporters if I worked with/lived amongst/hung out with a different crowd.
Of course I acknowledge that my personal experience is anecdotal. However, it also happens to match surveys in Canada regarding approval of Clinton vs. Trump.
Logically, that's incorrrect. I don't need to know that Clinton isn't winning in order to criticize the media pretending that they do know. It comes down to the reliability of the evidence.
The wide variance in the published polls published on the same day, or within a day of each other, should tell any reasonable person that some or all of these polls are not reliable. There are already several criticisms out there of specific polls oversampling democrats, and criticism that more polls doing that are being published than polls which do the opposite. If the media were capable of credibly discrediting one poll in favour of the other based on polling methodology or some related matter, then I could buy the idea that they ought to be able to tell the public what selected polls say and in doing so represent those polls as reliable. That's not what's happening. Neither MSNBC nor CNN explains why the Rasmussen poll should not be relied upon as accurate. Instead, they simply refer to the ABC poll and others showing Clinton with a substantial lead. And then they troop on a gaggle of guests who proceed from that assumption with their analysis. That's not reporting. That's advocacy for a candidate. That's not the function of the press in western society.
You can tell me, "well, that's the way it is", but it's still important to recognize that there are a lot of TV viewers who don't know that. Some of those may be undecided voters. I spoke to someone over the weekend who thought that CNN was a non-partisan news service, simply because that's the only US cable news channel that had been included in their cable package!
The simple fix is that media should report all the polls, unless they want to make an argument (to their audience) why certain polls should not be considered. Certainly the 24/7 news networks have plenty of time for that content.
