How Many Teabags?

From a blog post entitled "Tea party photo shows huge crowd — at different event":

There’s another problem with the photograph: It doesn’t include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth Street and Independence Avenue that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn’t show the “tea party” crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Also worth noting are the cranes in front of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. According to Randall Kremer, the museum’s director of public affairs, “The last time cranes were in front was in the 1990s when the IMAX theater was being built.”

It appears that the photo was actually taken in 1997 at a rally for Promise Keepers, a group for Christian men. According to the group’s Web site, nearly 1 million people attended the event. Photos of the Oct. 4, 1997, event that were posted on various Web sites in 2003, 2008 and earlier this year show either the same picture or a similar photo that has identical tents and what appear to be TV screens in the same locations.

On a perhaps related note, Obama's ratings are back to their July levels and the Dems are up nearly 4% in the generic congressional:

PS. Yeah I had doubts about the numbers. I even wondered about the photos. Is there any kind of photo matching site out there that you can run a photo through and it will tell you if it matches/resembles one already on the Net? I've heard rumours of such a thing...

Why Online Polls Are Stupid

I've voted five times so far in this one, which I discovered through FreeD, so of course its already been heavily FREEPED. Nevertheless, in a couple of days watch the "results" to get reported in The Sun or on Lifesite. Canadians support reinstating death penalty, or maybe: Angus Reid pulls online poll that shows Canadians support reinstating death penalty.

First Fruits Of The Green Shift?

Angus Reid Global Monitor) - The governing Conservative party remains ahead in Canada’s political scene, according to a poll by Angus Reid Strategies released by the Toronto Star. 33 per cent of respondents would vote for the Tories in the next federal election, while 30 per cent would support the opposition Liberal party

Steve got an early look at this poll and has done his usual excellent job with it, so let me just note that the poll was done (online) from June 23rd to 24th, or post Green Shift announcement. Some of the Lib. gains can therefore almost certainly attributed to the unveiling of the new plan. The poll also notes that a minor bounce-back in Dion's fairly dismal personal numbers can be associated with the plan.

Poll is available as .pdf here. Although Steve seems to have seen material not generally available, so definitely give him a read.

PS. Yes I have in the past questioned the methodology of AR online polls. Clearly, clearly, they have changed their ways so as to get a more scientific result.

What You're Up Against [Bill C-484]

Can't really blame the Liberal Party brass for not whipping the vote when a survey of the grass-roots coughs up numbers like these:

In the survey, 52 per cent of Conservative Party voters express strong support for [Bill C-484], while the proportion is lower among New Democratic Party (NDP) voters (47%), Liberals (37%), Greens (34%) and Bloc Québécois supporters (33%).

Got alotta work to do, ladies.

Angus Reid Says: You Fail, Stephen Harper

I know I've criticized the methodology of their on-line polls before, but if they're pumping out numbers like this they've obviously fixed those problems and deserve another chance.

The online poll shows the Conservatives with 34 per cent of the decided vote, the Liberals with 31 per cent, the New Democrats with 17, the Bloc Québécois with 9, and the Green party with 8.

I'll let Steve do the heavy analytic stuff, but here's a few quick remarks.

The poll shows that the Liberals continue to hold a healthy lead in Ontario, with 40 per cent of the decided vote, compared to the Conservatives' 34 per cent. The NDP is at 14 per cent in Ontario and the Green party at 10 per cent.

This looks far more likely than the Ontario result from the last couple of polls. And if Jim Flaherty wants to remind Ontarions on why we boooted him and his Mike Harris cronies out of office the first time around, then I say let him keep at it. Why anyone would want to go out of their way to attack a Premier who has just won re-election with a pretty solid majority is beyond me. Not that they love McGuinty around here, but he is pretty unsuitable as a designated punching bag for the Federal Tories. No, the Tories see Ontario manufacturing going South and they are looking for someone to blame. Perhaps, in their attempts to shift responsibility, they're willing to write the province off.

According to the survey, the top issue for Canadians is the environment at 23 per cent, followed by health care at 20 per cent. Only 6 per cent listed the Afghan war as the most important issue today.

Quite reassuring in that a bit of snow and cold weather has NOT apparently dulled Canadian's commitment to the climate change issue.

Flanders Gets Uppity

The guy at SoCon Or Bust has some harsh words for me because I won't participate in his online petition (which looks like it might be up here tonight) in support of Free D. I wrote:

Flanders is planning an on-line petition, and though I don't sign such things,my good buddy Galactus, Eater of Worlds, will probably show up and put his name to it. When details become available, I will let everyone know. I'm sure "Heywood J. Blome" will want to show his support for Free Speech, Liberty, and etc.

Flanders read this and lashed out as follows:

How so predictably liberal. Let someone else fight (and pay for) something you enjoy. Isn't that always the case with a socialist? It's always someone else's problem, and if a problem is to be addressed, let the government (i.e. somebody else) take on the problem. Rarely do you see a liberal taking on any sort of individual sacrifice or personal responsibility.

Dude, I would not sign your free Free Dominion on-line petition for the same reason I wouldn't sign an on-line petition for any cause, whether I support it or not, and for the same reason I wouldn't Freep a poll for a cause I support. Because online polls and petitions are cheap gimmicks and the results they give are totally meaningless. Pouring your soul into one these things is, frankly, childish, and a sign that you have too much time on your hands. What did your pro-abortion "victory" on facebook buy you? Doodley Squat! Abortion is still legal and CBC still a bastion of Communism!

So, since I don't want to appear childish online, I usually use one of my sock puppets when I want to participate in one of these games. In this case, Galactus, Eater of Worlds, will be happy to sign your petition the very minute it appears. And if you've got Galactus on your side, you don't need me.







Back Off, Flanders!

Flaherty Spokesman: Liberals FREEPED My Pole!

...or poll. Whatever. From the G&M:

Ottawa -- Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty received some unwelcome budget feedback recently when an online poll he commissioned recorded overwhelming opposition to his 2007 fiscal plan.

[...]

"The poll was hijacked by Garth Turner and his Liberal supporters," Dan Miles, director of communications for Mr. Flaherty, said.

Good job, Garth and co., but if you Turneristas want a real challenge, check out the Angus Reid on-line Forums, which I have written about here, here , and here. Sign up, then sign up again using a different name, and then again.

Indulge your fantasies: be black, switch genders, or adopt the persona of a Western Separatist--its all possible on the AR forums, and you can do it all from a single IP address!

Then start taking surveys: which party would you vote for, do you like cheese, have you ever suffered from skin tags? The fun and games never end, and you can help one of Canada's major polling organizations forecast a Green Party majority!

Angus Reid Really Loves Me

My latest Angus Reid persona got an email yesterday morning:

Dear SuperSecretPersona, Angus Reid wants to know WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Please take a quick break to answer a few questions on topics ranging from Canada's justice system and the RCMP to household pets.

So my boat-owning, B.C. Conservative answered a number of questions re. his political beliefs, the pet-food scandal (my fictitious cat became seriously ill), and a harmless but rather unsightly condition known as "skin tags".

Now, one of my anonymice claimed earlier that my obsession with pranking Angus-Reid makes me like the guy who orders a pizza using a false name, or who short-changes the TTC by eight cents every time he rides the bus and thinks that makes him a rebel.

Well, for one thing, I don't know how he found out that I do all that stuff. For another, it isn't what I'm up to here.

I am arguing that, using their current methodology, Angus-Reid is nothing more than a glorified quicky-poll like the type you find at (for example) the CTV website.

AR allows you to create multiple profiles from a single IP address, so while I currently have two of them active, that could be twenty, or 200, as many as the number of hotmail accounts I could create. Furthermore, AR has no means of determining whether or not the demographic information I have given them is correct (in fact its mostly false). And this is quite different from a phone poll. Given a phone-book, or better a reverse directory, a polling company can match the phone-number of a potential contact to a street, and therefore to a postal code or Stats-Canada census tract. Thus they have some basic information about the contact's likely age, ethnicity, social status, and so forth. And of course, its difficult to lie about your gender over the phone!

Now, I'm not saying on-line polls can't be designed to work as well as a phone-poll. But, in my experience of such things, its necessary to make real-world contact with your potential participants first (by, for example mailing something to an address and asking them to mail it back) in order to pin down their location in physical space, at which point you can make assumptions about their background, social status, and etc. Of course, that involves spending money on postage and paper. Angus Reid seems to be going the El Cheapo route, and the credibility of their polling suffers as a result.

More Fun With Angus Reid on-Line Polls

A few weeks ago I wrote of my experiments with Angus Reid's on-line polling service. My conclusion: as far as I was able to determine at the time, their system was pathetically easy to prank.

Yesterday, inspired by this young lady's post on the topic, I decided that I would toy with Angus Reid a little further. I used my home computer to create a second free email account (not hotmail this time), and successfully applied for the Angus Reid Forums a second time. On this occasion the demographic profile I gave them was a little more coherent, although I listed my home province as British Columbia and told Angus Reid I owned a boat!

My further conclusions: it does NOT look like Angus Reid is tracking IP addresses, which means that you can create as many profiles in their on-line forums as you want from a single computer. One person could, for example, become an army of Tories (something which, given their weird results lately, I suspect has already happened).

Meanwhile, over the weekend my first Angus Reid profile (the woman with the male name who was 50+, still a student, and made over $100,000 per year) got an email asking her to participate in a survey re. corporate citizenship: what companies were known for their community outreach efforts in what areas. So, for example, is the Royal Bank know for their contributions to kids' sports? That kind of thing.

I gave my on-line salute to Ing Banking, because that German guy in their commercials is dead sexxxy (he could only be more sexxxy if he had a fencing scar), and to KFC, because I was hungry when I did the survey and the idea of a pile of greasy chicken appealed to me. Otherwise they all pretty much got the big thumbs down.

The Tide Has Crested!

I kind of suspected this would happen. As the wave of attack ads and mud has tapered off, the Tories numbers have started to creep downwards; the Libs upwards.

Note that this poll is from the infamous Angus Reid, but the polling dates (March 6 and March 7) given do not seem to match up with the on-line poll they've been conducting recently, and which I wrote about here. Or at least if this is indeed that poll, Cherniak's responses to it (given yesterday) must have been excluded from the total.

Anyway, if it is an on-line poll, I still question the methodology, and would point to the weird Quebec numbers which seem to be at odds with every other polling source:

In Quebec, the Bloc has the support of 37 per cent of decided voters, with the Conservatives in second place with 25 per cent, and the Liberals third with 24 per cent.

Rationally or not, however, I am encouraged by the direction of the national trend (which is pretty close to Decima's).

Fun With Angus Reid On-Line Polls

Cherniak has complained about these guys' methods, and the old evil bald one has chimed in on the topic as well. Yesterday, UWHabs reported that they had signed up for Angus Reid online polling and received an invitation to complete their first survey, so I decided to take the "profile" I had created on their "forum" for a test run of my own.

Now, about this profile. I deliberately spent very little time with it, in order to insure that the on-line "person" I created for Angus Reid would be demographically incoherent. So for example:

1) For my name, I gave the hero in one of my (many) unpublished novels, but listed my sex as female.

2) I provided the phone number on the back of my Visa card (their help line), and a postal code from a nearby LCBO.

3) I gave a relatively correct age, but listed my occupation as student.

4) I provided a hotmail account as my e-mail address.

I lied outrageously in ways that escape me right now, but they accepted my application anyway.

So yesterday I received my first survey on "green issues", which also asked about voting intentions towards the end. Again, I answered as quickly as I could, without putting much care into the overall coherence of my responses (the wife and I were going out for wings). So for example, when it came to voting intentions, I punched in Tory, though I had indicated the BQ as the party most likely to act decisively on environmental issues. And so on.

My verdict is: the Angus Reid on-line survey system is pathetically easy to prank (or FREEP, as the youth of today apparently call it), unless some kind of filters are in place that I am not seeing. You could, for example, create as many on-line profiles with Angus Reid as you have hotmail accounts, and unless they are tracking IP addresses and tying each account to a specific address, it is impossible for them to verify even the most basic pieces of demographic information (like the province you live in). At least with phone surveys they can tie you to a relatively precise physical location and presumably tell if you are lying about your gender. Further, even if they are tracking IP addresses, you could work from a wireless hot-spot or a public library computer to create multiple profiles. The only real limit is the amount of time a person is willing to spend filling out on-line forms (this one survey took me about fifteen minutes, and whomping up the initial profile about the same length of time).

But if you're a political party that is already willing to buy headlines from Bourque, or if you're a Blogging Tory with no life outside the frat house, it would not be difficult to manufacture several dozen Tory responses via the Angus Reid system.

Or Liberal responses, if you were that way inclined, or whatever.

Therefore, treat Angus Reid survey results with a great dollop of skepticism.