>Shane Mage wrote:
>
>>This is amazing. So the "credibility" of US polls rests on the
>>proposition that some proportion of their sample consists
>>of liars about voting behavior who nevertheless are telling
>>the truth about voting intentions?
>
>Yeah, and why is that so incredible? There's no bandwagon effect
>when the winner-to-be is unknown. (People also exaggerate their
>voting behavior; Census turnout figures are often 10 or more
>percentage points higher than the actual.) And the polls do a very
>good job in projecting election results, with little deterioration
>in recent years....
Its incredible because, as the judges said in their instructions whenever I served on a jury, "If you find that a witness has testified falsely on a material fact you are entitled to reject that witness's entire testimony." Or as the lawyers put it, "False on one, false on all." (OJ Simpson was rightly acquitted mainly because the prosecution presented perjured evidence). Moreover, the so-called "bandwagon effect," if real, would reflect the fact that, as herd animals, humans tend to adapt their appearance and behavior to what they perceive as the expectations of the rest of the herd. It should scarcely apply to an anonymous answer to an anonymous questioner-- especially so in reference to an election (2000) in which both Major candidates were Losers and virtually the only people with the right not to be ashamed of their vote were non-voters and Nader voters.
Shane Mage
1960's cartoon: Two grunts under fire in their Vietnamese jungle foxhole. One says to the other: "They all told me that if I voted for Goldwater I'd be drafted and end up in Vietnam. I voted for him anyway, and here we are."