Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Even Stupider "Polling" Methods

Ah, polling, problematic enough to start with,  doesn't work when you set it up that way.

I just voted in an online poll asking who the top three "winners" of last nights "debate" were.  The reporting of the results ranked the "winner" to be Bernie Sanders though the format didn't include ranking. 

Let me explain the problem with that.  If A, B and C are the "winners" you could determine those who got the most votes in those three rankings but "A" might have been the second or third choice of more who felt "B" was the "winner" or  "C" or any and all of the others combined but that would still not mean they were the first choice of most of them.  He could as easily be the third choice of all the rest of them.  I listed Bernie Sanders as the one I thought came in third last night, Elizabeth Warren being most effective and Pete Buttigieg second (though that wasn't based on what he said but on the rest of them doing badly).

In order for ranked choice voting to work, the choices have to be ranked by the voters.  Not to mention no "poll" which is done on the basis of voluntary participation by a very atypical population (the readers of a poll which is "big" only as "big" is misused in regard to blogs) in which you can vote as many times as you want to is bogus to start with. 

Why do they even bother with these things?  

Ranked choice voting in real elections should be adopted everywhere, it's the only way under our foul system to keep the last choice of a majority of voters from taking a seat from which they will not be removed before the next election. 

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