THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Advocacy science...it’s an oxymoron.

Wow, that was incredible.  I can’t believe that this guy (Ziegler) doubted that Nate would print the interview.  Why wouldn’t he?  Isn’t that something that you should never say in a hostile interview?  “I dare you to print this!” Or, “You’ll never print this!” You are just asking the guy to print it just to make you look like an idiot, if nothing else.

In all fairness to Ziegler, Nate should have known more about the poll, etc.  He should not have asked the guy whether it was done by phone or internet if the answer was already on Ziegler’s web site, unless Nate made it clear that he wanted to clarify that for the readers. 

Also, the questions about the senators were not fair.  If a person proclaims themselves as informed or smart or knowledgeable, they shouldn’t have to answer any particular questions on the spot.  You can always “trip” someone even if they are well-informed or knowledgeable.  And should someone who is indeed well-informed about government or politics know every senator and congressman from every state, on the spot?

I liked that Nate harped on the notion that not every question was unambiguous or even had an answer.  It is a “trick” of pundits and journalists and right and left-wing nut cases to ask questions and make statements that are ambiguous or have no clear-cut meaning or answers.  The notion that the statement “Obama kicked off his career at the home of Ayers” is unambiguously correct is outrageous!  The phrase “kicked off his career” is so ambiguous that there can’t possibly be a correct answer that includes that wording.  At the very least, there has to be multiple answers to the question, “Where and when did Obama ‘kick off his career’?”

Just Ziegler’s insistence that that is an unambiguous statement makes me think that he is the hack and not Silver.

The mistake that Ziegler made was in thinking that Nate was of the same ilk as most political pundits - not intellectually honest.  He definitely took on the wrong guy!

OK, I just read Nate’s first article from yesterday, describing the poll.  I don’t see anything wrong with that article.  Nate is very careful to be intellectually honest.

While it is not 100% black and white, characterizing the pool as a “push poll” is correct. It is clearly a poll with an “agenda” and that agenda is clearly to discredit Obama and/or his supporters.  That is pretty much the definition of a “push poll.”

The guy (Ziegler) claims that every question has an answer and is unambiguous, and then he says that one question has no answer (the one about Russia) but that the answer “Palin” is acceptable. I don’t understand that at all.

And this whole “survey” or “poll” thing is ridiculous.  Was this a randomly sampled survey?  How and why did he choose the 12 people for the video interview?  What if you asked the same questions to McCain supporters or to random people in general?

Did Wayne Gretzky “… start his hockey career” in the NHL, WHA, or when he was two years old in his backyard rink?  Maybe when he was six playing against 10 year olds?

It was a completely silly question to ask, since the ambiguity is apparent.

I emailed Zeigler about the McCain responders prior to reading Nate’s interview.  He did not email me, but reading Nate’s interview, he said that if McCain responders are similarly clueless, he would pay back our expense for getting the poll.  His reasoning for not doing it himself was very lame.

As for the 12 people, he said it was all 12 people that his staff picked.  But, if you read the comments, you get the feeling that they interviewed alot more, and they settled on these 12 for their video.

You would think that all people in LA are idiots if you relied on Leno’s Jaywalking.  (I can’t stand that guy; I don’t know who’s more smug, Leno or O’Reilly.)

Ziegler’s poll is not well done, and there’s plenty to criticize in it.  It’s a survey designed to prove a point, not measure attitudes.  But it’s not a “push poll,” at least as the term has traditionally been used.  A push poll calls thousands of voters, and the point is to actually change their vote under the pretense of doing a survey.  (In fact, responses probably aren’t even tabulated.) This wasn’t a push poll. 

Actually, take away Ziegler’s profanity and I don’t think Nate came off any better than Ziegler.  He didn’t know a lot of stuff he should have.  And leaving out McCain voters is valid if his resources are limited (as long as he drew a random sample of Obama voters).  Although I think he made a mistake:  he’s almost certainly right that McCain voters would have scored higher.

I think the big assumption here is that Silver is, in fact, running a fair and accurate transcript of the conversation.  He states that there were a few ad hominum exchanges that he excised.  I just wonder if their inclusion would change our perspective on the interview (even if they are vulgar).  I also wonder whether Nate is being accurate in depicting the way he asked his specific questions.  For example, is it possible that Ziegler’s being accurately quoted (by most accounts, he’s a major ass), but that Silver himself isn’t?

The problem here is that, even though I generally agree with him most of the time, Silver is not an unbiased reporter in this case.  He is part of the dispute, clearly on one side of the matter and not the other.  As such, just providing a text transcript, rather than a recording or something, makes me uncomfortable...especially given that it makes the guy look so terrible.  Not saying that Nate is being dishonest here--my guess is that he is not--but still, it makes me uncomfortable.

I also agree with MGL that the senator questions at the end were in poor taste and unfortunately indicate a specific agenda on Nate’s part that again suggests bias.
-j

The exact wording of the question in the poll is “Which candidate started their political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.”
That’s different that what Nate said (launched his career). Again, there’s no excuse for Nate to come into the interview unprepared. There’s no question that Obama began his campaign for the Illinois state Senate (his first political campaign) in the home of Ayers and Dohrn, so it’s only a question of what constitutes the start of one’s political career.
If you read the whole survey, that to me is to only question that can be considered even remotely unfair or ambiguous. Every other question is valid. Setting aside his tone and motives, I’m with Ziegler here. He has commissioned a fair, legitimate survey that demonstrates that large portion of Obama voters are misinformed. It also demonstrates that negative stereotypes about Republicans stick better than negative stereotypes about Dems: at least in the minds of Democrat voters.
Of course, they should poll an equal sample of McCain voters (and third party voters who I would wager are far, far more informed that the other two groups). That would put these numbers into a much clearer context. But there’s still value in what’s there.

"It also demonstrates that negative stereotypes about Republicans stick better than negative stereotypes about Dems.”

Yeah right. All I have to do is watch 5 minutes of Fox News to refute this argument.

“There’s no question that Obama began his campaign for the Illinois state Senate (his first political campaign) in the home of Ayers and Dohrn...”

There is absolutely no evidence that Obama launched his political campaign for the US Senate in Ayer’s living room. Republicans need to let this go.

""It also demonstrates that negative stereotypes about Republicans stick better than negative stereotypes about Dems.”
Yeah right. All I have to do is watch 5 minutes of Fox News to refute this argument. “

No smart ass, all you have to do is provide a refuting survey that shows that negative facts about Democratic candidates are more or at least as prominent in the minds of voters than those of Republican candidates.

““There’s no question that Obama began his campaign for the Illinois state Senate (his first political campaign) in the home of Ayers and Dohrn...”
There is absolutely no evidence that Obama launched his political campaign for the US Senate in Ayer’s living room. Republicans need to let this go. “
I’m not a Republican. And neither I nor the survey used the term “launched his career”. Nor did I say US senate, I said Illinois state senate. And Obama had a prominent campaign event for his campaign for the state senate in the home of Ayers. Whether it qualifies as the beginning of said campaign is ambiguous as there is no obvious landmark for the beginning of a campaign. But it happened. After one minute of googling, I got the following:

“He [Ayers] gave a house party when Mr. Obama was running for the State Senate” (NY Times)

““I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor. Obama and Palmer “were both there,” he said.” (Politico)

The event at Ayers’ house happened, Phil gives the source. This week Ayers in an interview said it occurred, but that the event was repeated elsewhere “maybe 20 times the same day, I don’t know”, IMO trying to downplay the significance.

The matter in dispute is if this was the first event or not, and if it was one of many similar in a short period of time.

Ayers had hired Obama to run the Annenberg challenge, and they later sat on the Woods Fund together, so it’s not unbelievable that Ayers would host an important function for Obama.

It also demonstrates that negative stereotypes about Republicans stick better than negative stereotypes about Dems: at least in the minds of Democrat voters

This time around, perhaps, though I think that in 2004 negative stereotypes “stuck” fast to John Kerry among voters in both parties (purely subjective, of course).

Following along with this episode, I can’t help but be reminded of the H.L. Mencken observation:

“Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.”

Yes Phil, I am a “smart-ass.” I won’t argue with that.

After researching the Ayers-Obama connection, I’m not sure what to believe. I do not think that they were ever friends of any sort. And I’m not sure what to make of the gathering at Ayers’ house for Alice Palmer.

Try to be cool guys.

The event happened.  But as Ayers said, it was one of several events that very day.

Start is an unambiguous word.  It means beginning, first… start.

Career is a very ambiguous word. 

In any case, we have no idea if this is the first event.  And, it should be obvious that Obama setting foot in another person’s house cannot be the “start” of a career.  The start of his political career would be whenever he himself decided that his political career has started.  “Michelle, I’m going into public service.  I want to run for state senate”.  THAT would be the start of his political career.

Or something else.  Obviously it had to happen before he set foot in someone else’s house, who themselves were expecting him as a politician.

The question itself has an unverifiable answer.

He could have said “one of the events, near the start of his political career”.

I just want to correct Brian in post #11. The event that Phil was referring to was a party for Alice Palmer, not a party for Obama. And I think Palmer invited Obama, which makes sense. At that party she announced that Obama would take over for her in the state senate, while she ran for a senate seat in the US congress.

Arguing which party’s supporters are “more informed” or which party’s stereotypes “stick better” would be one giant circle jerk (if I may be so crude) and completely unproductive to any rational political discussion.  Talk about ambiguities and non-answerable questions!

So a representative sample (if that was even the case) of a certain party’s or candidates supporters’ got a bunch of factual questions wrong.  The sky is blue and water is wet.  The point?  Does that mean that their votes are any less significant?  Does that make Obama any less competent?  I don’t even get this guy’s line of thinking.  Half the people in this country can’t identify England on a map of the world. So what?  Maybe these Obama supporters who got 60% of the questions “wrong” (or whatever the number is) are smarter than the average person.  Without some baseline, how in the world would we know whether their failure to answer most or all of the questions correctly is suggestive of an average, below-average, or above-average person or even voter?

Some idiot (Zielgler) who for whatever reason does not like Obama or the Democratic Party decides to do a survey and film a video that in his childish mind makes a party and its candidate “look bad.” Whoop de do.

If you read the whole survey, that to me is to only question that can be considered even remotely unfair or ambiguous.

I guess you don’t consider the question about Palin/Fey as being unfair/ambiguous, when there was not even a correct answer, and somehow, bizarrely, Ziegler considers “Palin” the correct response.  Can I ask a question about something Nixon said, even if it is Rich Little doing an impersonation of Nixon?  That makes no effen’ sense to me.  In fact, that alone suggests to be that this guy is a whack job!  He says, “Well actually Tina Fey said it, but if they answered Palin, I consider that the correct answer!” That blows my mind and tells me the whole thing is a load of crap.

It was a funny interview, period. Other than that, I don’t even think it is newsworthy.

BTW, whether or not this was technically a “push poll” (and it sure sounds like one to me, based on the Wikki definition), is completely irrelevant to any rational discussion and is a matter of semantics anyway.  Whether Ziegler’s survey was a “push poll” is like asking whether the Mets were a “playoff caliber team” this year.  It seems like they were, but lots of people would argue that they were not since they didn’t make the playoffs.  OK, bad analogy, but I think that any argument about whether this was a “push poll” in spirit or by “letter,” is a specious one.

Here is a quote from this guy’s (Ziegler) web site. 

It pretty much tells you everything you need to know about his agenda, his intellectualism, and his honesty.  It is pure B.S.  I don’t mean that in the sense that it is not true.  I mean that in the sense that it is rhetorical garbage.  Not that those kinds of statements have no place in “journalism” or at least in “opinion pieces.” They do, but they cannot be taken seriously.

On November 4th, 2008 millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama’s limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President of the United States. For many of these Americans, the explanation was rather simple… the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job.

I’ll make one comment about his blurb, although I could make 10.  “The news-media?” Who?  Sean Hannity?  He hates Obama with a passion.  What percentage of the news media?  55%? 95%?  And what is “their job?” To this guy, it would be to tell us how utterly inept and dangerous a President Obama would make.

B.S.

I’ll say one thing about the “media?” If I knew nothing else about a candidate but whether the “media” endorsed him or not, that would be enough for me.  The reason is that the “media” generally values personal freedom and transparency of government, two of the most important things I value in a society.

I had heard the event described as a “meet and greet” for the new candidate who would run for Palmer’s seat. The public obviously knew Palmer, most did not know Obama. Ayers said this week there was more than one. I will take him at his word until I see evidence otherwise.

I do not hate Obama, but I am frightened that the policies he ran on, foreign, economic, etc, will do harm to this country. He won the election. so now the political contest is about appointments and bills. Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff. Described as a “bad cop” Democrat partisan who will whip people into line, but who as head of the DCCC supported conservative Democrats for Congress; who pushed NAFTA for Clinton while in the White House, and described as a NeoCon who’s father was a member of Irgun. THings that could push Obama towards the center.

MGL:
You are simply mistaken on the “push poll” issue.  It is not a semantic or trivial distinction at all.  Did you even read the Wiki definition?  Here it is:

“A push poll is a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll. In a push poll, large numbers of respondents are contacted, and little or no effort is made to collect and analyze response data. Instead, the push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as a poll.”

A push poll, in short, is not a poll at all. It’s a large-scale attempt to deceive the people being interviewed.  And a post-election poll, like Ziegler’s, by definition is not a push poll (since it can’t impact the election).  Ziegler’s poll is biased and agenda-driven, and thus poor research, but it’s not a push poll.  A better analogy than yours would be to say “Texas was a weak team this year because they had weak hitting,” and when someone points out they actually led the league in RS but allowed the most runs, to reply “well, that’s a semantic distinction—I’m right that they were a weak team.”

However, Ziegler’s survey is definitely not “fair” as Phil suggests above.  In many cases he has cherrypicked a few negative facts about Obama (to the extent these are facts) which are not widely known by the voting public and not covered by the mainstream media (or in the case of Biden’s plagiarism, a very old story).  For Palin and McCain, however, he chose items that had been covered massively by the media (like Palin’s wardrobe), that Obama voters were certain to know.  It’s a contrived result that proves nothing about the knowledge of Obama voters (it would be easy to do a similar exercise “proving” the ignorance of McCain voters.)

I was in Canada when the Biden thing happened, and I had no interest in all the primaries.  From what I read a while ago, the Biden plagiarism was unintentional, like an intended, but forgotten footnote.  Technically, it’s plagiarism if you copy without citation, which is what happened.  But, it’s not really what we think of plagiarism.  Anyway, that’s the Kool-Aid I drank.

The whole idea behind the poll is stupid of course.  Talk about an end-justifies-the-means approach.

***

As for Brian’s fear, I think Fox “News” does more damage to the fabric of Americana than anything any politician can do.

After the four debates, independent pollsters determined the winner of each debate to be the Democrats (something in the 60% ish neighborhood, give or take).  But, the Fox “News” poll of its viewers (obviously not representative of Americans, but likely representative of the people who watch Fox “News") gave the win to the Republicans for each of the 4 debates, at a rate of 87% ish, give or take.  It is beyond embarrassing that a “News” channel could attract such a non-diverse viewership, who are obviously attracted to the extreme bias in the reporting. That Fox “News” is the most popular “News” channel in America is testamount to how much Americans prefer biased “News”.  I’d be more fearful of Sean Hannity than any politician.

I think Fox News’ popularity is more complex than that. Certainly they list conservative, but it’s a very populist conservatism, and they also have a real tabloidy approach to coverage (no surprise, as that’s how Murdoch’s newspapers are run.)

Their actual newsgathering apparatus isn’t that bad, although CNN obviously puts more resources into foreign corespondance. And they do have a propensity to overcover the Blond White Girl In Trouble stories, but that’s basically everyone at this point.

Most of the problems people have with Fox News really has nothing to do with their news reporting and everything to do with their opinion/commentary programming. And I don’t doubt that O’Reilly is an ass, but I don’t think his presence materially taints their newsgathering.

(Full disclosure: I’m (sorta) employed by a Fox affiliate. We’re also associated with CNN and do work for ABC and NBC stations as well, though. I’m hip-deep in conflicts of interest here, though.)

The Joe Biden plagiarism was not simply he wrote something and failed to cite the source, he told a story AS IF it had happened to him.  He was recounting his family situation and how he had risen up despite his ancestral legacy of mediocrity (at least in the eyes of those who value higher education which Biden was stereotyping at this point) The problem was, the introspection and almost verbatim speech was lifted from a member of British Parliament.

Does that make Biden a bad guy?  No, but it is extremely bizarre to give a speech that closely to one you obviously heard and admired enough to adopt and not always throw out a qualifying phrase such as “just like my friend Neil Kinnock” and then rattle on?  I don’t even want to speculate on whether he knowingly lifted the “life experience” not thinking anyone would remember the original telling of the story.

According to this wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden#1988

It says of the episode:
“Though Biden had cited Kinnock as the source for the formulation many times before, he made no reference to the original source at the August 23 Iowa State Fair debate in question or in another appearance.”

So, I would take it that I would always credit Pete Palmer for the RE table, on and on and on.  And then, a couple of times, I present the RE table, making no mention of Palmer. 

If this is indeed what happened, that he used to cite it, and in these one or two cases he didn’t cite it, then would you call that “plagiarism”?

So, reading that wiki article, it certainly seems to be much ado about nothing.

If that wiki article is fairly honest in its description.

I’m sure we could find evidence of plagarism in every author’s/speaker’s/internet poster’s work if we looked hard enough. I’ve always believed that if you know something by heart, than there is no need to cite it. But if your just changing someone’s words around, like Biden did, then you need to cite the source. No big deal, he just forgot to cite his source.

recently Biden was speaking on the campaign of growing up in Scranton, and referenced living a couple blocks from the Casey family, where Bob Sr was 10 years his senior, and Bobby 12 years his junior...but Biden moved to Delaware when he was 10

I’m not all up on where Biden lived, but I moved away from Canada ten years ago, but all of my family still lives there, and I visit quite regularly.  If a family moves into my mom’s neighborhood, I’ll know about it, and I’ll consider it my neighborhood still.

Now, is it possible that this is what Biden might be referencing?

Colin,

I like your point about Fox News, and I think there is an even more basic point regarding its popularity. In a nation that is more or less evenly divided politically, the widespread perception exists on the right that the vast majority of television news is left-wing.  Those that don’t believe it distribute themselves among the other networks.  Those that do go to one place.  It’s a numbers game, and I’m surprised at how much it flummoxes commentators. 

Whether or not the perception of bias is correct is immaterial (personally, I do find most news to be center-left).

As Stephen Colbert has noted, reality has a strong liberal bias…
-j

Here’s a good, non-partisan rundown of why Nate is right, but also wrong:
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/zogbys_misleading_knowledge_te.php

OK, so I was wrong about whether it is a push poll.  I don’t see how what you call it has any relevance to anything whatsoever.

#21-People of all political persuasions
mix up news commentary with straight news programs.It’s my contention,they are reading news blogs of their choice, be it left winger oer right;with all their
proceding political propaganda;those sites rantings rarely if ever,divide the commentary
from the news,in their over the top denunciations.

Speaking of Fox News…

Either O’reilly has changed over the years or my opinion of him has changed.  While he is still a bully who rarely admits when he is wrong and occasionally lies about something he did or did not say, he actually tries to have “fair and balanced” opinions about things, and to get at the truth, wherever it might lead him.  He often criticizes the Republicans and the “right,” although he is often “over the top” in his rants about the “radical left wing,” whoever that might be.

Hannity on the other hand, is a complete blow hard who absolutely hates the Democratic Party and everything he thinks they stand for.  He will stoop to just about any level to discredit Democrats and liberals and show his support for the Bush Administration and his (Bush’s) cohorts and cronies.  While he seems somewhat intelligent and is probably quite knowledgeable, I don’t hesitate to call him a complete moron whom I dislike intensely.  He is cut from the same jib as the other idiot, Limbaugh.

I can tolerate O’Reilly. Hannity’s just a doofus, so he doesn’t really bother me either.

The three TV/Radio personalities that I despise the most are Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter.

Coulter is too cute for me to hate....

Coulter is the most disgusting person on TV.  Even Hannity is more tolerable.

***

Bialik has the recap:
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/zogbys-misleading-poll-of-obama-voters-459/

Ziegler responded to Nate:
http://johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=176

Here is the (significantly altered though still mostly accurate) transcript that Silver ended up posting. For the record, his transcript leaves out huge chunks of the ending sequence (including him acknowledging that his basis for claiming that I was misleading people was only that he disagreed with me politically), but I was surprised it wasn’t even more of a hatchet job than it is.

Nate made this claim:

Ziegler asked, among other conditions, that I post a full transcript of the interview, which I have. The transcript below is intended to be representative as possible from my shorthand transcript, with the exception of two or three rapid-fire ad-hominem exchanges being edited out.

Anyway, Nate never responded back to Ziegler about the “significant” alterations, and the other ones that would make Nate look bad.  I’m not sure how Ziegler though can claim “significant” alterations and yet say “mostly accurate”. 

It’s interesting that Ziegler basically said that he wasn’t taking the interview seriously half-way through, so he didn’t bother to care for his professionalism.

You can probably have an entire course of Interview 101 based solely on the give-and-take of Nate and Ziegler.

***

By the way, any hockey fan has an instant dislike for this Ziegler, as he shares the same first and last name of our sport’s worst league president. 

John Zielger’s (the NHL one) worst moment was a live interview on Hockey Night In Canada with his silly charts and how the sport was in deep trouble.  It was embarrassing, and his huff-and-puff (similar, coincidently as Nate’s Ziegler) was the most candid thing about him.

There isn’t much left to say about this non-issue.  The poll was moronic, as were Ziegler’s “conclusions” or interpretations of it.

Nate was out of line with some of his comments and questions, but basically his interview was reasonable.  For example, I guess it is clear that this was not technically a “push poll” although it makes little difference one way or another.  Nate should know that.  And he certainly should have known whether the poll was conducted by phone or on the internet (which I think he did - I don’t know what he asked that question).  Again, no big deal though.  And, as I said before, his questions about the Senators were not necessary.

I am not sure why so much criticism of Zogby. Since it was not a push poll, can’t anyone commission Zogby to do any kind of poll they want?  It is not for Zogby to decide whether the poll is a “good” one or not.  Isn’t that kind of like criticizing a publisher for publishing a book you don’t like or disagree with?

Finally, this guy (Ziegler) is a whack job, but that opinion is probably only shared by someone with a liberal slant or at least not a right-wing slant.  For the record, the link above to Ziegler’s site is written poorly and is filled with typo/grammatical errors.

Actually, if you are using Zogby by name, then they have a right for editorial input and final say.  If someone wanted “Tangotiger.net” involved in some poll-collecting, and they were going to quote my site, darn right I won’t accept anything blind.

That said, Zogby itself quoted the results of the poll on their own site, which was pretty bad of them to do, since they are trying to distance themselves from the poll to begin with.

"When asked why he didn’t include questions referring to unfavorable aspects of McCain’s and Palin’s distant past, he said, ‘I felt that these were the best 12 for what I was trying to accomplish.’”

What exactly was he trying to accomplish? I still haven’t been able to figure this out.

“He added that some of the questions weren’t worded fairly.”

At least he admitted this. The question about which candidate could see Russia from there house was completely misleading, since there was no correct answer.