BloggeRhythms

With the presidential election still a year away, the media’s bombarding the public with continual polling data, spending countless hours treating the “latest results” as if they actually know what they’re talking about. 

However, although it’s certainly understandable that media talking-heads need something to fill the airtime, the information they’re spewing about candidate rankings from both major political parties indicates next to nothing worthwhile. Because the polls themselves, and the information gathered in them, is highly likely to be incorrect.   

As mentioned here, back on Oct. 9, 2015, Daniel White @time.com wrote that although there are: “Polls all over the place, [o]n the negative side, the glut of polls often doesn’t add up to much, while problems with getting accurate results are starting to hurt the polling industry’s reputation.”

In that regard, “The announcement this week that Gallup, one of America’s most storied pollsters, will no longer do horse-race polling on who’s ahead in the 2016 election cycle only underscored the huge changes in the industry. 

“Michael Dimock, president of the Pew Research Center, said it’s simply not worth it for places like Gallup to stay in the game. 

“It feels like some kind of pivot, mostly because they way the rest of the polling market has developed,” he told TIME. “What you’ve seen is the arrival of a whole ton of polls that are covering that horse race side of it, just jamming us with new data day in and day out on the fortunes of the candidates.” 

“Cliff Zukin, a professor of public policy and political science at Rutgers University, said that makes sense, given the costs involved with doing reliable polling for a place like Gallup. The decision also came after a botched final pre-election poll in 2012 that put Mitt Romney ahead of President Obama. 

“These guys have contributed to the political process, they’re not just in it for the short time,” said Zukin. “They do not want to mislead the public and they don’t want to take a chance of not being able to do it well—it takes a lot more resources to do it well now.”

Confirming the acknowledgement of major, top-ranked pollsters that they are unable to accurately predict voting results, or even present conclusive indications, an article going all the way back to 10/21/2003, @freerepublic.com explains why the task is just about impossible.

In a study that encompassed 20 polls taken by nine polling organizations between Aug. 7 and Oct. 5, 2003, some of the major flaws were uncovered, as follows:

“Even the most accurate polls in this study were wrong 40% of the time overall. The accuracy of each of their internals was worse. So, when the national media tout polls from Gallup, Time/CNN, Newsweek, Zogby, and such about what "the American people feel" regarding something insubstantial like "presidential approval;" or whether or not they want to re-elect the president; or which issues are most important to them; or how a person who's name is all but unknown nationally suddenly becomes "the frontrunner" for a party's nomination, it's wise to keep three things in mind: 

1)There is no objective way to verify the accuracy of most polls.
 
2) It is part of human nature to want to predict (thus control) the future. However, this study demonstrates unequivocally that, whether or not it's due to political bias or flawed methodology, polls often drastically misinform the public. 
 
3) Only 1 in 20 polls in this study got all five questions right. In other words, 95% of polls were wrong on one or more of their questions. So when a pollster uses the technique of summing one individual internal question result to another in order to claim something about public opinion, all the pollster may be doing in reality is compounding errors. For example, when Zogby adds answers for, say, "fair" and "poor" together, if either the result for "fair," or the one for "poor," or both are wrong, all he is doing is compounding errors and giving false information to the media and public. 

Which means that regardless of what current poll results seem to indicate, the probability is that the conclusions reached are incorrect.

And, if you need further proof of how badly polls actually reflect what final voting outcomes will be, simply look at those presently leading both major party’s races numbers-wise. Because, twelve months from now, the three top Republican current contenders will likely be long forgotten, while the leading Democrat may well be in prison.   

On another issue, AP reports: “Republican Matt Bevin, a businessman and Tea Party favorite, beat Democrat Jack Conway on Tuesday to win the race for Kentucky governor -- becoming only the second GOP governor in the state in four decades.”

What’s most important here is that the off-year election was seen as a test for outsider candidates, especially those seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Bevin has run as an outsider ever since he unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Mitch McConnell last year and lost. 

Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife. 

According to Reuters, via foxnews.com, “The Republican National Committee asked the IRS Tuesday to audit the finances of one of the Clinton family's charities following its refusal to re-file tax forms even after acknowledging errors in reporting donations from foreign governments.” 

The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) said this week “that it had decided against re-filing so-called Form 990s because the errors "had no impact" on the total amount of income it reported to the IRS. The charity claimed that the total amount of income was correct, but the breakdown of government and private funding was not. As a result, CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley said the organization "does not believe a re-filing is necessary." 

In response: “RNC Chairman Reince Priebus requested the audit in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. 

"Given CHAI’s history of repeatedly failing to accurately report the amount of money it received from foreign governments ... there is no way to tell whether there exists other undisclosed foreign government grants without the IRS conducting a full audit of CHAI’s financial records." Priebus wrote. "The American people deserve to know whether the largest philanthropic arm of the Clinton Foundation continues to misreport the funds it receives from foreign governments, and whether this might lead to the potential for further conflicts of interest.” 

So, here we have another instance of Clinton activities being questioned, which may or may not gain any traction on its own. However, at the same time, investigation continues into the falsity’s told regarding the Benghazi raid. As well as significant contradictory revelations being disclosed in batches of Bill’s wife’s private emails exchanged while she served as Secretary of State. 

What’s more, with the presidential election still a year away, it’s quite likely Republicans are holding back considerable additional evidence of unethical behavior and misuse of power to be released closer to election day.  Leading to the ongoing question: Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you reading this?   

That's it for today folks.

Adios