I think Republican conservative belief makes one more obtuse just like it makes liberals and Democrats harder to influence through scare tactics.
It’s sort of like a religion. When your religion tells you it is correct and you shouldn’t question it, then you’re less likely to question other things that authorities tell you. When your belief is that questioning is good, then you tend to question everything told to you.
It’s no secret that over the last 20-30 years, the Republican party has sought to maintain more of an ideological purity than Democrats, who have tried to move towards the “big tent” direction.
It also doesn’t surprise anyone that issues Republicans are obsessed with are, to them, good or evil, life or death, and cannot be compromised. Abortion is always murder, gays are always evil, security is always necessary (except when you’re not in power), and questioning your own leader is bad.
Look at Democratic issues. Labor, poverty, health care, deficit, these are all things people can compromise over. We can have differing degrees of regulations regarding these things and still call it a success. How many pro-life Republicans are willing to say that we should keep abortion legal and only work to reduce them through helping the women who seek them out?
The reason I don’t trust Republicans is that they are unwilling to see the other side, and they consider their own side pretty much divine. I see any compromise by them to be merely working towards an extreme viewpoint. This past year has laid bare their agenda. There’s no way I’ll ever vote Republican again unless some massive changes happen
Well, it seems you think that if they ask someone about being a Republican, it must be a bs poll - but a poll sponsored by Fox would ask the same thing. Pollsters are generally very professional. When I’ve been polled, not often, I can sometimes figure out who is doing the polling, but not from the attitude of the poll taker. BTW, the father of a friend of my daughter’s is a bigwig at Gallup, and those guys are very Republican. And also very professional. What you get on the street as a result of attitudes like those expressed are not connected to the experience of being polled - unless some guy is hyper-defensive.
I’ve seen polls about those things, so some people are. But there are lots of other polls commissioned. As for dinner, one can always hang up.
Not that truthers were as prevalent as birthers, to give an example of nutjobbery which is more left wing, but if someone called and asked me about that, I’d be happy to let them know that despite my dislike of Bush I don’t believe such crap. I think anyone upset about birthers should blame them, not the pollsters.
Any evidence that Democrats did this during Bush-era polls? Certainly some will, but this many? Next you’ll be telling me that no one actually agrees with Rush, and that 99% of his loyal following are listening just to make fun of him.
That explains the benefits for gay people answer? The hating white people answer?
You, my friend, are in deep denial.
The only truly bs poll is one I got from the Republican party, who seems to not have noticed I switched affiliations 5 years ago. That one I did screw up their desired answers - “Yes, I do want Obama to institute socialized medicine.” But that wasn’t anywhere near a professional telephone poll, and really doesn’t count. Telephone polls also don’t come with requests for donations.
Yeah, those are fundraising calls, not really polls. The “poll” questions are just a set up for the pitch. I’ve gotten those too (no idea how I got on a Republican call/mailing list, but I get fundraising crap from them all the time). I did the same thing as you, “Yes, I want to pay higher taxes and spend more. Yes I want terrorists to have more rights, yes I want government to keep growing out of control”) until they caught on, said “thank you, sir,” and hung up. My impression was that they get th sarcastic answers from bad targets a lot.
I’ve got like, a minute to respond, so: I have no idea what’s up with the gay question. My party is essentially backward and bigoted on that issue. That’s because it’s full of old people.
I know they do those serious polls. THat’s why I picked those questions. Those results, I trust.
I have no idea about Bush-era polls. I suspect you’d get a lot of truthers, though. Except to join those leagues, you have to hate America, the government, and the Republican party. To join the “Obama eats babies” club, you just have to hate Obama.
Mine came by mail, so I had the added pleasure of sending it back and costing them postage. The worst example of this was a poll about religious liberty sent by the very Christian head of the Berkeley Explorer Scouts, who was pissed because Berkeley wouldn’t his homophobic organization use the docks for free. Yes, I hate Christians! That problem went away when the guy was arrested for child molestation.
This cannot be overstated, and is the primary reason behind the numbers in the poll in my opinion.
This, and Cort’s cite of the Rasumssen poll showing the popularity of the “Tea Party” crowd.
This group known as “Republicans” has moved even more to the right. This hard right group have been innundated with things that are patently untrue - birth certificates, socialism, death panels, etc. - so much that they believe them. They ACTUALLY, genuinely believe that Obama was born outside the USA. This has been confirmed for them by reputable news networks and their own elected politicians.
I’ve read a favorable article about truthers in the local free rag, and saw no indication that they hated America, just Bush and those who pulled his strings.
Now this I have to check out when I get back from work!
Well I’ve never actually met a Republican, single or otherwise. Unless there’s a fatal flaw in my reasoning, I’d have to say that Republicans do not exist. Don’t you agree?
The organisation that commissions the poll certainly is a factor to consider. It is a basic part of critical thinking to go to the bottom line and find out who paid for the poll and consider why they wanted the questions asked. Motives matter, who is paying the bill matters. I would personally say that who pays for the poll is more important even than the questions that are asked.
It is like the common news story that begins with something like “Scientists say that…” I look at the sources for the article. Who conducted the research, who provided the grant money? Somebody just was curious and wanted to ask questions or was there already a prefered end result?
The polls on the SDMB are another example of self-fullfilling results. The people who answer are those with a vested interest in seeing the results of the poll. Others don’t bother. The sample is skewed in favor of the expected results.
Polls like this from The Daily Kos, along with most of the crap from Fox News, is a classic example of trolling. The issues addressed were almost dying out and falling off the news screens, so they needed to be re-stirred and kept on the page.
This part is true at least. And it’s just as true for public on-line polls at CNN or, yes, Fox. They’re all based on non-random samples and cannot be said to represent the larger group. Such is not the case here.
And you can question the Daily Kos’ motives if you like. I won’t. I can guess their motives; they probably have something to do with making Republicans look bad. But the motives of the people commissioning the poll do not change the polling method, or skew the results. The method is just math, and math has probably never even heard of the Daily Kos.
You’re confusing things like on-line polls, which have no control over who answers the questions, with professionally conducted polls, which try to get a sample similar to the population of interest.
There may be some bias based on who conducted the poll in the sense that if the answers don’t come back as desired they get buried, but accusing a reputable polling company of bias is a serious matter, and you should have more to back it up than that you don’t like the results. I don’t quite see why a company would risk its reputation and very business for benefit of the Daily Kos.
No it isn’t. It doesn’t affect the methodology or the legitimacy of the results whatsoever. Polling companies don’t do “self-fulfuilling prophecies.” They follow the method. If the method is sound, the results are sound.
Online polls like what you sometimes see on Fox or MSNBC are not scientific polls. They’re just self-selected, interactive games that yield absolutely meaningless results. This is not that kind of poll.
Even Fox has it’s bullshit, “push this button if you hate Obama” polls, but also has it’s legitimately commission “Fox News/Dynamic polls” which are conducted scientifically.
Anything that invites you to “join our poll” is not a poll, but the ones that are conducted scientifically by professional polsters is pretty accurate. That 2% margin of error you see touted is genuine.
The good news is that the proponents of adding religious teaching in schools continue to lose ground even in the courts of law. The bad news, is that indeed the numbers of the proponents of teaching creationism are not reducing and most of them are Republican.
Thanks for your view. I posted my first ‘consider the source’ comment when this thread was in The Pit. Had I known that the thread would be moved to Great Debates I would not have posted. Since you quoted my original Pit post here I thought I would post a follow up to explain my thinking, as a courtesy.
Although I do read all the threads here in Great Debates I don’t really find it productive to engage here. Carry on. I really don’t have a position to defend here, just made an observation in the pit and followed with an expansion on the comment.
What is this where the great debaters come to slam posters behind their backs. Why can’t you say it in the forum this was posted on? This just shows me you are a bunch of pathetic cowards.
Behind their backs? I don’t think you understand what is going on. One of the moderators moved this thread from the Pit (which is where we go to bitch) to Great Debates (which is where we are held to moderately high debate standards).
I’m not sure what you’re going on about. And I don’t wanna junior-mod here, but you aren’t allowed to call anyone names in this forum.
That said, would you care to respond to my two posts above. They were made when we were in the Pit, so I was a bit salty with the prose. But I’d like to know why you believe stupid conspiracy theories. Why haven’t you made the effort to learn about the facts?
The worst example of this was a poll about religious liberty sent by the very Christian head of the Berkeley Explorer Scouts, who was pissed because Berkeley wouldn’t his homophobic organization use the docks for free. Yes, I hate Christians! That problem went away when the guy was arrested for child molestation.