Meaningless From Now On: Gallop, Zogby,Rasmussen, ARG, Quinnipiac, Pew, Marist...

[Tom Rinaldo]

In fact all opinion polls mean nothing and are unworthy of our consideration. NONE of them, not a single god damned one of them, award a single campaign delegate, so what good are they?

If a new poll comes out with a 500 likely voter sample from Connecticut showing Obama closing the gap with Clinton there, why bother mentioning it? Unless actual delegates are awarded based on that poll, there is nothing of any value to be learned from it.

Same thing with the Florida Primary. 1.6 Million Democrats who have nothing better to do than vote in an election that will not award convention delegates. Pathetic. Why encourage that nonsense by giving it attention? Florida voters are ALWAYS demanding that we pay attention to their meaningless votes. Look at the crap they pulled in 2000. They made the whole F'ing nation sit and watch them count "hanging chads" for weeks and NONE of it mattered! Did the actual winner get a single electoral vote out of it? No! Nada! Nothing!

Haven't we learned anything? Stop paying attention when millions of Floridians vote. We all know that Florida elections don't mean anything.

[FrenchieCat]

1. I never look at polls until the day before the vote......

and It has saved me many a sleepless nights.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. LOL Good advice too often unheeded. n/t

[FrenchieCat]

5. Did you see this Tom? It's from Young Turks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x88814

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. Just watched.

He ends with "we're moving on" and that is what I decided to do also. I see that the debate over that is still raging, it almost sucks me in. I find myself tempted to say "yes" to one point raised about it, and "But, but..." to another point raised about it. So may ways to look at it, so many things that still could be said about it, different possible conclusions, even in my own mind. Instead I'm moving on. Some think there was absolutely no news there, some think there is a lot more news there. A lot has been said. Enough has been said. I'm moving on too.

[FrenchieCat]

9. Excellent decision.

I also found this article interesting. It's a look at our election from a German point of view.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,531598,00.html

[Tom Rinaldo]

11. That really is gist for a different thread

It's 4 pages long Frenchie! It's 4:40 AM here and I just got up to turn off some lights and such and instead got sucked back into my computor. I need sleep! I draw the line at reading and discussing a four page article foucussed on a different facet of this many faceted election season, lol.

Really, it seems chock full of perspectives. Some that some, including me, might contest; many that simply are worthy of consideration and discussion. If it becomes a sepetate thread and I don't notice the discussion, feel free to PM me to point me to it later. Good night Frenchie. It's still "early" where you are!

[dkf]

2. Primaries are organized by state parties. The Florida state party

decided they didn't want their votes to be worth anything. Ergo they aren't worth anything.

If they wanted their votes to mean something, they would have lived by the agreement they made.

And if you think primaries value one person's vote, tell that to a Biden or Kucinich person who didn't reach viability.

[Tom Rinaldo]

6. Right. And who organizes Opinion Polls? Corporations that's who.

The fact that some of them are not for profit corporations is grasping at straws. Only a DESPERATE person would make that distinction. There is nothing Democratic about opinion polls. The powers to be are totally up front about that. You can get 5% or 50%, they just don't care. They refuse to give out delegates

No delegate awarded? Don't waste my time.

[avrdream]

4. Tom, let me tell you:

the FIRST thing I was impressed with was how many Dem voters came out today regardless of the zero delegates stuff. Next thing I got impressed with was that Hillary's vote count approached a million. Can I just say that again: approached one million voters (okay, okay, it was only 860,000 or so but it approached). That is a lot of friggin' Floridians who told the Florida Dem party to stick it up their butts.

Third thing I noticed was the big difference in number of votes between Hill and Bar - officially neither one of them campaigned here but we all know about the Obama ads that "showed up" here anyway. Despite that, Hillary absolutely KICKED ASS in numbers. Have you seen the graphic of counties won? It is a purple Hillary state just like SC was an orange Obama state.

I can feel it in my bones that this victory actually means something. The voters spoke and will continue to speak next week. I sense that Hillary will pull far ahead on Tuesday.

[Lucinda]

10. I think all the absentee ballots may not be in as well...There was a notice

to that effect on the Sos webpage earlier tonight.

[robbedvoter]

15. It was 1,300,000 voters in Fla- the 860,000 is just Hillary's vote - can't dismiss that

In the 2004 primaries onlt about 780,000 showed up - of which 580,000 for Kerry

[Double T]

8. Yep. Polls are meaningless.

It is unfortunate that the DNC has disenfranchised DEM voters in BOTH Michigan and Florida. The DNC is its OWN WORST ENEMY.....and ours TOO!

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. I see people are showing interest in stupid polls again

Seems like a good time to kick this thread

[robcon]

13. Polls are not stupid at all. Ignoring polls means ignoring politics.

Polls are why Edwards and Giuliani quit - they saw no hope for Super Tuesday.

[Tom Rinaldo]

14. Polls don't award delegates. Hence polls are "moot". Florida taught me that

If you can't win delegates it doesn't matter what people think.

[Freddie Stubbs]

19. Apperently John Edwards looked at the polls

[NJSecularist]

16. Polls are a valuable tool to determine who might win a race days before hand

Deal with it. If you don't like them, too bad. Just don't read them. Most of us do. Most of them have shown themselves to be pretty accurate.

[Tom Rinaldo]

20. No you are wrong. Anderson Cooper explained it to me

He dismissed the Florida Primary results as "moot" because it was only a "beauty contest" and no one got any delagates from it. Untill then I was thinking of the Florida election results, with a sample of 1.5 million voters and a zero degree margin of error, as an indictor of how voters were feeling about the candidates leading up to Super Tuesday. I thought it was a really really really big one day tracking poll.

I was finding it instructive to learn that the Florida voters who voted early and the Florida voters who waited until election day to vote all backed Hillary Clinton by the same large percentage. People have been wondering about that exact same thing regarding Super Tuesday primary states. I was finding it instructive to see that Hispanics inside Florida were favoring Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama by the same large margins that they did in Nevada. I was finding it fascinating that 3 women voted in the Democratic primary for every two men who voted in the Demoratic primary.

But then I was told that those results are moot because no delagates were awarded, so the Florida primary was unworthy of attention. And then I figured out that opinion polls don't award delegates either! So now I realize they are moot also, and unworthy of our attention. I have Anderson Cooper to thank for helping me see the light.

[NJSecularist]

21. So all this entire post really is...

is nothing more than a Hillary Clinton the-polls-don't-mean-a-thing-even-though-Obama-is-bridging-the gap soapbox rant?

[Tom Rinaldo]

22. No it is a 1.5 million Florida votes don't mean a thing rant. n/t

[NJSecularist]

23. Florida does mean something

You can take something from it, even though there were no delegates awarded. You can take certain trends from FL and compare them to other states.

But you can't take too much from Florida. Neither campaign campaigned there, so the advantage goes to the side that is more well-known and has better name recognition (Clinton).

In the same way, you can't take too much from polls either. But you can take trends from polls and use them as useful pieces of data. They aren't meaningless, either.

[Tom Rinaldo]

24. Parody aside, I agree with almost all you say here

I think the claim of Hillary's name recognition in Florida advantage gets overplayed - Obama has gotten media rock star treatment for a year and a half now, and much of what people have "heard" about Hillary over the years was right wing attack propaganda launched against her.

The question of not knowing how live campaigning could have effected the results is a very valid one. But I will add that the states where retail campaigning makes the most difference are almost completely behind us now. In large states like Florida and California and New York and Illinois and Missouri, media ads are much more important - and even without arguing over whether any foul was involved, only Obama ran media ads that could be seen by Floridians on TV.

[bluedog]

17. Voter turnout is heaviest in decades Florida

Voter turnout is heaviest in decades
Tuesday's primary draws 41.3 percent of the state's voters; Tampa's turnout lags.
By JENNIFER LIBERTO and CONNIE HUMBURG, Times Staff Writers
Published January 31, 2008




TALLAHASSEE -- For the first time in 20 years, a whopping 41.3 percent of Florida voters went to the polls to vote in a presidential primary.

Tuesday's election marked Florida's busiest primary since 43 percent of voters turned out in 1988, when Republican George H.W. Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis were on the ballot.

Both major parties shattered recent turnout marks, with Republicans drawing 50 percent of registered voters and Democrats drawing 41.6 percent.

Party officials credited the bevy of candidates and excitement of the early primary contest for driving voters to the polls.

But Secretary of State Kurt Browning, a Gov. Charlie Crist appointee who fought hard for the property tax amendment, said the ballot initiative was the biggest driver.

Browning said Lee County turned out the largest percentage of Floridians at 57 percent, with four of five voters favoring the tax amendment.

Lee County Property Appraiser Ken Wilkinson said voters turned out there because they are "particularly well versed" in property tax language. More than half of all registered voters in Sumter, Sarasota and Brevard counties also flocked to the polls.

"You put a pocketbook issue on the ballot and you can count on people being at the polls," said Browning, who noted several smaller counties also had strong turnouts, with most voting against the amendment.

Democratic Party officials say Democrats showed up mostly because of the fervor over presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, even though none of them campaigned in Florida.

"I clearly believe a lot of this was driven by the overall message of change," said Karen Thurman, head of the Florida Democratic Party.

Statewide, Republican voters totaled 1.9-million, and Democrats reached 1.7-million.

In the Tampa Bay area, Hernando County topped the turnout list with 45.4 percent of registered voters. Pinellas County met the state average at 41.3 percent. Below the state average were Pasco County at 40 percent and Hillsborough with 37.2 percent.

In raw votes, Pinellas Republicans came in second place, with 117,219, compared with 176,098 in Miami-Dade, which has far more Republicans, said Pinellas Republican Party chairman Tony DiMatteo.

"The governor got out the vote here," said DiMatteo, citing the importance of both the ballot initiative and Crist's endorsement of Sen. John McCain. "It was historic."

Republican Party of Florida chairman Jim Greer credited Crist with higher turnout throughout the state.

"People wanted to cut their property taxes, and they had confidence and respect for Gov. Crist in supporting McCain," he said.

Leaders of the pack

Nearly four out of 10 Florida voters cast ballots in Tuesday's election, thanks to the pocketbook property tax issue and heated presidential primary races. But in some counties, participation was far higher. Four counties: Lee, Sumter, Brevard and Sarasota each saw more than one in two voters turn out.



http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/31/State/Voter_turnout_is_heav.shtml

[robbedvoter]

18. Only exit polls matter. The rest - manufactured reality

Even exit polls can be biased - note the one they took in SC - where they made the MSM talking poing a question: what was Bill Clinton's role in making your decision? (or did he have one?)