"PSST, We Like You Better Now"

[AmerDem]

The public responded well to John Kerry's speech at the Democratic convention – even if the press didn't say so.



There's been much discussion of the fact that John Kerry didn't receive a significant "bounce" in the polls coming out of his convention. The consensus explanation is that since most people have already made up their minds, Kerry didn't have many people to persuade. Much of the traditional convention bounce comes from voters in the nominee's own party who finally get an extended look at him and in effect "come home" to where they're going to wind up eventually anyway. Since nearly all Democrats have already decided they're voting for Kerry (approaching 90%), and he already leads Bush among Independents by a substantial margin, there just wasn't anywhere to bounce to.

Nonetheless, most polls showed some modest gains. The ABC News/Washington Post poll, Newsweek poll, and CBS News/New York Times poll all showed Kerry picking up a few points, between 2 and 8.

The exception was the Gallup poll, which actually showed Bush gaining a few points on Kerry coming out of the Democratic convention. But here's a basic fact about survey sampling: Every survey is an extrapolation from a small number of people to a larger population; sometimes you're right, and sometimes you're off, even if your methodology is perfect. When four polls are taken at the same time, and three show the same results but one has something completely different, it's the lone outlier that's probably mistaken.

So let's say you're a conservative news channel confronted with this set of poll results. What do you do? Why you focus on the one poll that differs from all the others, of course! As they've documented over at Media Matters, Fox News was all over that Gallup poll like white on rice. Not only did they play it up again and again, they made sure to emphasize how super-awesome Gallup is, lest anyone be persuaded by any of the other numbers they might encounter in non-Fox news outlets. "The Gallup poll, the most respected survey that's tracked convention bounces the longest, says Kerry got nothing," said Carl Cameron. "Let's move on to the Gallup poll, which is a very respected poll," said anchor Brian Wilson.

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19463 /


posted this at GD but it's getting burried in a hurry, things are very fast paced there anymore.

[wildeyed]

1. I like him better

after the speech. But it is true, I liked him allot before. The speech just proved to me that Kerry is a good clutch player, that he doesn't choke under pressure. But we know that, right :D