FORWARD IN REVERSE: THE PROGRESSIVE LIBERTARIAN: RON PAUL FACTOR: POLLING DATA FLAWED

Ron Paul Factor: Polling Data Flawed

The web surfers love him more than any other 2008 Presidential candidate. Ron Paul is the most sought after candidate featured by Gambling911.com. The oddsmakers have responded by maintaining him at 15 to 1 odds of winning (slashed from 200 to 1). Ron Paul just happens to be the only candidate who supports legalizing online poker.

"When it comes to politics, the oddsmakers have been far more accurate than the polls," explains Gambling911.com Senior Editor, Payton O'Brien.

Ron Paul also has more campaign money in his coffers than John McCain.

Gambling911.com Special Contributor, Jennifer Reynolds, might know why. She has come out with fisticuffs flying against Pajamas Media (PM), which Ms. Reynolds says "cannot be a credible source of polling data".

"They claim that because the USA Today ran a poll of a mere 394 persons and Ron Paul did not receive support, that gives PM no choice but to not include Dr. Paul for the forthcoming period," Reynolds said.

Her article appears in its entirety below.

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By Leaving Ron Paul Out as a Choice Pajamas Media Cannot be Credible Source of Polling Data.

Pajamas Media (PM) has been running a weekly Presidential Straw Poll on their website. Every week that Ron Paul has been listed he has come out on top. (Scroll through the weekly results to see the numbers.)

Last week, in fact, he was leading with 54.7% of the vote and Fred Thomson received 25.1%. This week PM decided not to include Ron Paul as a choice and surprise, surprise, Fred Thomson jumped all the way up to 54.7%. That sounds remarkable you say. Why would they do that? How can any result be credible if they don't include all of the candidates? Their response is nothing short of astounding. They claim that because the USA Today ran a poll of a mere 394 persons and Ron Paul did not receive support, that gives PM no choice but to not include Dr. Paul for the forthcoming period.

So, question for you, PM: Do you or do you not believe in your own straw polls? If so, then why would you leave out the candidate who has won your poll by a large margin every time you have listed him? If not, then why are you wasting everyone's time. You might as well just have announced that your own polls mean nothing at all and we should all stop reading your website and go to USA Today. Well, you just may find that a lot of Ron Paul supporters will stop reading both.

Even the USA Today admits that because their sample size is so tiny that they have a margin of error of +/-5 percentage points: Which could mean Ron Paul has FIVE percent of the vote. But that wouldn't give PM a reason to exclude Ron Paul.

Now that PM has removed the top candidate their polls cannot be considered scientific or have any kind of reliability. At this point their straw polls are no more useful than a blogger who puts a poll into a blog response.

Ron Paul discusses Iraq, Terrorism and Barry Manilow?

To be fair, Pajamas Media also claimed to have dropped Jim Gilmore from their poll because he too did not reach one percent in the USA Today poll. However, Jim Gilmore has also dropped out of the Presidential race so it is hardly a fair comparison.

PM also had the unmitigated gall to claim that " 'targeted' voting by Paul supporters on this and other open polls may even be hurting their candidate because the public is turned off by his supporter's behavior." What behavior? Voting in a poll? Of course Ron Paul supporters are targeting their votes to their candidate. That is what a poll is all about. You don't vote for the other guy when they ask you who you want to be President. You vote for your candidate. Are you claiming that because Ron Paul is receiving support, people will not vote for him in national polls? That doesn't make any sense at all. So what is a lonely Ron Paul supporter supposed to do? It seems they are darned if they do and darned if they don't. If you vote for your candidate you are a "turn off" and are disturbing the "public", on the other hand, if you don't vote for him, then he obviously has no support and should not be discussed. PM admits that their "evidence" for this assertion is purely anecdotal based on some email complaints (supporters for other candidates who don't like seeing their guy lose, perhaps?). Well, I bet they will be receiving a few more anecdotes after this move.

PM claims that they are pulling this stunt because they have to: They have established rules that they must follow. So, I suppose these rules go something like this: if some polling company uses terrible polling methods and only asks 394 people, and that poll gets skewed somehow we are bound to use their statistically insignificant numbers to decide who will be allowed to participate in our poll. We will make sure we don't let anything like democracy get in the way of our methods. For sure we will not bother with science. And we darn sure will use any excuse we can to keep Ron Paul out of our polls. His supporters keep getting in the way of our results!

Shame on you PM and all the other "pollsters" out there that seem to think it is their job to interpret what polling support means. We are seeing a repeat of the Sean Hannity episode during the third debate. Before the polling numbers came in, Hannity claimed that Ron Paul had just lost the entire election and should drop out immediately. Red-faced, he had to pull his best spin job, when Fox's own polling numbers came in and Ron Paul was in the lead. What else could he do but claim the numbers had to be faked? Miraculously, as Mitt Romney pulled to a slight lead, Fox's polling numbers once again gained credibility.

By showing that they have no interest in actual facts in their weekly straw poll, Pajamas Media has just cast doubt on the impartiality or factual content of the rest of their website. You decide.

One would hope that this was just an error. A mistake by a well-meaning employee. As soon as rational heads prevail, PM will once again include Ron Paul. However, they may have lost quite a few viewers by then. Anytime pollsters ignore their own data in order to come to a pre-determined conclusion, results get skewed. It seems a lot of results have been skewed lately.

As Gandhi once said:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win." It seems as if Ron Paul is in between stages two and three right now, hopefully on his way to number four.