On Aug 13, 2008, at 9:50 AM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> On Aug 13, 2008, at 7:01 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> ....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...
>>
> Gallup admits its falsification--only using questions that cast no
> doubt on the "horserace" propaganda of the MSM. As I wrote recently
> (July 29):
>
> "Such polls are just noise, and not only because they have never
> been of any use so far from the election. The fact is that the
> pollsters, nearly all of them capitalist firms, have an enormous
> financial interest in the outcome of their polls: the demand for
> their product depends on a perception that the election is *close*.
> And their control over their own methodology, especially question
> formulation and weighting of respondents, enables them to get as
> close a result as they want every time. Incidentally, an honest
> question--used by no poll as far as I know-- would be this:
>
> "do you expect to vote for:
> -the Republican candidate
> -the Democratic candidate
> -a Third-Party candidate
> -no preference yet"
So, "whom will you vote for?" with no names listed is somehow devious or propagandistic?
Pollsters' economic interest is in being as close to the final electoral outcome as possible.
And the generic party ballot of the sort you list is very misleading, since generic Dems almost always poll better than actual Dems.
So just about everything you said here was wrong.
Doug