I have been reading e-mailed complaints from dozens and dozens of you about CNBC.com's decision to take down our online poll gauging results of the CNBC-MSNBC-Wall Street Journal presidential debate.
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| AP Ron Paul |
I agree with the complaints. I do not believe our poll was "hacked." Nor do I agree with my colleagues' decision to take it down, though I know they were acting in good faith.
My reasoning is simple: Political dialogue on the Internet, like democracy itself, ought to be open and participatory. If you sponsor an online poll as we did, you accept the results unless you have very good reason to believe something corrupt has occurred--just as democracies accept results on Election Day at the ballot box without compelling evidence of corruption. I have no reason to believe anything corrupt occurred with respect to our poll.
To the contrary, I believe the results we measured showing an impressive 75% naming Paul reflect the organization and motivation of Paul's adherents. This is precisely what unscientific surveys of this kind are created to measure. Another indication: the impressive $5-million raised by Paul's campaign in the third quarter of the year.
To be clear: I believe that Ron Paul's chances of winning the presidency are no greater than my own, which is to say zero. When he ran as the Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1988, he drew fewer than a half-million votes. In last week's Wall Street Journal-NBC News Poll of Republican primary voters--which IS a scientific poll with a four percentage point margin for error--Paul drew two percent.
He lacks the support needed to win the GOP nomination, and would even if the media covered him as heavily as we cover Rudy Giuliani. Why? Because Paul's views--respectable, well-articulated and sincerely held as they are--are plainly out of step with the mainstream sentiment of the party he is running in.
The difference we are discussing--breadth of views vs intensity of views--is a staple of political discussion and always has been in democracies. Highly motivated minorities can and do exert influence out of proportion to their numbers in legislative debates and even in some elections. They most certainly can dominate unscientific online polls. And when they do, we should neither be surprised nor censor the results.
--John Harwood
5 comments:
"In last week's Wall Street Journal-NBC News Poll of Republican primary voters--which IS a scientific poll with a four percentage point margin for error--Paul drew two percent."
This is akin to the Southern Jim Crow era when the white handlers denied Black people equal access to education and then accused them of being uneducated.
The MSM is swirling through the mass of minds, manufacturing opinion day and night, while ignoring Ron Paul.
There may be an explosion of enlightenment if Ron Paul applies his millions of dollars to poignant campaign commercials and saturates the markets in a timely manner. He may be able to appear on the collective consciousness as the knight in shining armour when all seems hopless and lost.
Timing.
The Jim Crow analogy in the previous comment has merit.
There is a little thing in the science world called "cause and effect."
I was talking to my 70-year-old mother the other day who gets her news from mainstream network, cable, and Internet outlets. I asked her what she thought about Ron Paul. She replied, "Who?"
If people are unaware that Ron Paul exists, how can they vote for him?
Many people who "are" aware of him --mostly the Internet base who glean news from multiple and varied sources of their choosing -- seem to feel his message is viable and worth supporting.
It is fact that Ron Paul suffers from exclusion and misreporting in the press. (The misreporting factor is a whole 'nother can of worms I'd rather not get into here.) See Professor Paul Levinson, "The Media Disenfranchising of Ron Paul".
The Internet is not called the "great equalizer" for nothing. In that arena, news cannot be controlled by anyone or anything.
It's not unreasonable to deduct that, if Ron Paul were treated fairly by getting equal exposure in the mainstream media, he would be garnering higher results in mainstream polls. If people do not know he exists, of course they won't vote for him.
I think that every day Ron Paul becomes more of a force to be reckoned with. The rest of the stuffed shirts and echoing shells can't distinguish each other as they try to out-whore each other for who can bleat the "party line" the most. But given the anarchy of the country's opinions given the disaster of the neo-con plans, the party line is about as organized as a bee swarm.
Every report of Ron Paul's quarterly earnings will see more money flow his way. In the money orgy of the mainstream media if Ron Paul doubles his haul to ten million by next quarter, he will be a force that will HAVE to be reckoned with, then look for hit pieces on him as his face is emblazoned on the covers of Time and Newsweek. Such is the predictability of the "free press."
"I was talking to my 70-year-old mother the other day who gets her news from mainstream network, cable, and Internet outlets. I asked her what she thought about Ron Paul. She replied, "Who?'"
Great Caesar's Ghost, anonymous! I'm with ya' on that one, good buddy. I was talkin' to my 87 year old mother and she can't hear nuttin' 'cause she daud.
And my wife, she's no better. The other night she told me, "Take me to the drive-in movie to make love." Ooooo Weeee Baby! After we arrived I spent the rest of the night tryin' to figure out what car she was in!
The other day my son came home with an announcement for a father and son picnic. My wife notified the milkman.
And my dog, that's another story. He learned how to beg by watchin' me in bed.
My wife learned from him how to roll over and play dead.
No but really, anonymous, my wife treats me like a king -- (wistle, wistle) Here king! Here king!
ba da boom.
When I asked my son if he knew who Ron Paul was, he confidently exclaimed “Gandalf!”
Well, let us hope we see him charge into battle on his trusted steed and beat the evil duo, first Gouliani and then Shillary.
K.
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