On Aug 13, 2008, at 4:03 AM, Tahir Wood wrote:
>>>> <lbo-talk-request at lbo-talk.org> 08/13/08 8:57 AM >>>
> McKinney [immeasurably small]
>
> Interesting concept. Does it mean less than one person? If not, how
> could it not be measurable? And if around 2% equals zip, when does zip
> become something? 3%? 4%?
"Immeasurably small" was my crude way of saying "<0.5%." In a poll with about 1000 respondents, numbers that small are close to indistinguishable from 0. "Zip" is an equally tendentious way of saying "next to nothing." There is basically no support for third- party candidates in the U.S. this year, though you'd never know that by reading some left-wing forums. In previous elections around this time, they were polling 5% or higher (which usually declined by election day).
Here's some more from Gallup:
<http://www.gallup.com/poll/109435/Support-ThirdParty-Candidates-Appears-Limited-Thus-Far.aspx
>
> Measuring Third-Party Support
>
> There are certainly trade-offs in trying to get an accurate read on
> third-party candidate support. Each election year, Gallup uses a
> variety of approaches, including third-party candidate name
> identification, the open-ended question reported here, and prompted
> ballots, in which the names of all candidates who will appear on the
> ballot in most states are read, to try to assess the level of third-
> party voting. These questions help inform Gallup about the level of
> third-party voting but they also inform Gallup about whether a third-
> party candidate merits inclusion in its standard presidential trial-
> heat question.
>
> The standard closed-ended Gallup trial-heat question used in Gallup
> Poll Daily tracking and USA Today/Gallup polling has thus far in
> 2008 not included the names of minor-party candidates. Doing so runs
> the risk of overestimating their actual support and affecting poll
> accuracy, based on a comparison of final pre-election poll estimates
> to the actual vote on Election Day. Typically, unless there has been
> a well-known and well-funded third-party candidate running (like
> Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996), minor-party candidates have accounted
> for about 1% to 2% of the actual vote on Election Day. Recent polls
> by other firms that have included the names of minor-party
> candidates in their presidential trial heats find total third-party
> support ranging from 5% to 10% among registered voters.
>
> Even though Gallup does not read the names of minor-party candidates
> in its standard question, it does accept volunteered responses of
> minor-party candidates in its closed-ended questions (about 1% in
> tracking so far this year). Still, it is possible that individual
> respondents might think they can choose only from among the names
> read when the question is asked, and thus may not know that they can
> volunteer the name of a third-party candidate.
>
> The open-ended question gets around this potential pitfall by
> putting all candidates on equal footing, so to speak. No names are
> read, and therefore there can be no presupposition that the
> respondent should make a choice between the two major-party
> candidates. Thus, if there is significant unmeasured support for a
> candidate outside of the two major parties that is not being
> detected through volunteered responses in the standard closed-ended
> question, the open-ended question should pick it up -- particularly
> if voters are highly committed to voting for a third-party candidate.
>
> Gallup's standard measure of listing the candidates when asking the
> presidential trial-heat question dates back to the 1936 election,
> and attempts to mimic the act of voting as closely as possible. When
> voters cast their ballots on Election Day, the candidates' names and
> party affiliations are listed on the ballot for them to see. The
> open-ended question thus requires a higher standard of knowledge of
> the candidates running than does voting itself, but is a useful
> secondary approach to make sure the standard ballot is not missing
> any undetected third-party support.
>
> Implications
>
> While it is not out of the question that third-party voting could be
> higher this year than it has been in most recent elections, the new
> Gallup Poll clearly suggests there is no unmeasured groundswell of
> support for any of the minor-party candidates running at this point
> in the campaign.