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Author Topic:   Fake polls, fake news
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(5)
Message 17 of 710 (799900)
02-17-2017 1:41 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Faith
02-17-2017 10:35 AM


I know about Twitter from trustworthy sources. Also about the infiltration of the Townhall meetings. But in my opinion anyone who is half conscious ought to know such things are rigged because we know he's very popular.
Consider what a 45% approval rating means. This means there are well over 100 million people who approve of the job Trump's doing. 100 million is an enormous number - we are not really capable of comprehending numbers so large, since it's so divorced from anything we experience on a daily basis. So more than 100 million people approving of you means you are, indeed, pretty popular.
Nevertheless, in a country as vast as the US, it also means there are even more people who disapprove. Now, these people are not randomly distributed. They cluster by geography and social group; so your own social circleis going to give you a very poor understanding of how people in general think.
I know nobody who approves of Trump. Every single person with whom the matter has come up in person has been critical of Trump (with one exception). And not just a little bit critical - vociferously critical. He is seen as a figure of ridicule and/or fear by pretty much everybody I know.
And yet, I know that 'everybody I know' is a tiny insignificant fraction of humanity. 'Everybody I know' is not a representative sample of anything - not even the place where I live, so it seems perfectly plausible that there are 100s of millions of Trump supporters elsewhere, even if I never meet any of these people I read about on the internet or see on TV.
The same applies to your social circle. Even if the overwhelming majority of people you speak with are Trump supporters, it's still perfectly plausible that Trump supporters are in a minority. Everyone you ever meet in your entire life would still consitute a tiny and insignificant minority of the US population. That's why they invented opinion polling - it's not possible to figure out how popular or unpopular someone or something is by relying on people you meet.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Faith, posted 02-17-2017 10:35 AM Faith has replied

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 49 of 710 (799941)
02-18-2017 5:38 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by Faith
02-17-2017 5:29 PM


I'm not arguing from my own personal circle of family and friends, I'm arguing from what I see in those public venues, the HUGE support for Trump. Sure it's "plausible" that Trump supporters are in the minority but I know from the election that they aren't. When I see a poll that puts his popularity below 50% I know it's fake. Yes, I just know it. The same way you believe the lower percentages I believe they're fake. You can't prove it, you have to resort to the convoluted reasoning in your post that amounts to nothing. No evidence, no facts. We're both trusting in our intuition.
In the election Trump got about 46% of the vote. That would mean about 23% of eligible voters. How can you know a 45% approval rating is fake based on that?
I'm not trusting in intuition at all. I don't have any intuition on whether 40% or 50% or 60% of Americans support Trump. Looking at the polling, Gallup actually puts Trump's approval rating at 40%. Gallup's is amongst the lowest of the major polling companies - most put his approval rating in the 40s. Rasmussen is the only one with a majority - but the Rasmussen poll is a different measure than the rest; since it only counts people who say they intend to vote.
So the polls all seem fairly consistent - Gallup and Pew report about 40% in polls which include all adults (this includes non-citizens who can't vote).
Most polling agencies, which only poll registered voters, put the approval about 45%.
Rasmussen, which only polls the subset of voters who say they intend to vote, puts it a little over 50%.
Registered voters who do not actually vote skew Democratic in the US; while US residents who are not citizens would of course be expected to be concerned about Trump. So if this is 'fake', every polling agency in America is colluding together to pull it off.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 50 of 710 (799942)
02-18-2017 5:59 AM
Reply to: Message 36 by Hyroglyphx
02-17-2017 8:44 PM


The other danger is that pulls on some strings. As was demonstrated in the election, they were manufactured depending upon who you was reporting the polls. And that's because they know they can manipulate how people think. Conservative pollsters were reporting that Trump was ahead while liberal pollsters were reporting that Hillary was ahead. Same data, different results. That's because there is nothing accurate about them. They are misleading and quite honestly irrelevant. How other people presume to vote should never be a consideration for how YOU want to vote or the reasons why.
Different polls do not contain the same data - that's why the results are different.
But what you say isn't really true if you look at the polls. All of the major polling companies consistently put Clinton ahead since September, with the exception of the one conducted by USC - paid by the LA Times. I don't really know much about the LA Times, but it doesn't seem to be a pro-Trump paper from what I can see. A couple of other polls occassionally showed a narrow lead for Trump, but then the same poll by the same company on a different date went back to Clinton.
It is of course possible to slant polls by collecting data in certain ways, or by the way you ask questions, if you wanted to do so; but I'm not sure where you're seeing these conservative polls that put Trump ahead. If by 'polls' you mean when a newspaper asks a slanted question of its own self-selected readership with a small-print caveat underneath that this is not a scientific poll then you'd be quite right - but those aren't polls, as the small print advises.
The idea that it's better to inflate your candidate's support is a bit of an odd one when you think about it. If an election is expected to be tight, the last thing you want to do is create a false impression that you are ahead. That motivates your opponents to get out and vote and encourages complacency amongst your supporters. Inflating support only makes sense for rank outsiders who need to convince voters they would not be throwing their vote away.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 116 of 710 (800056)
02-19-2017 4:43 PM
Reply to: Message 62 by Percy
02-18-2017 4:47 PM


As I said, the Rasmussen poll includes only people who intend to vote, while the Gallup poll does not. This could account for the difference. Trump is still very popular with his base, but his administration appears chaotic and disorganized, and Trump himself seems ignorant, impulsive, mean and inept. He has no experience in governing and it shows. To ignore it would be to ignore the elephant in the room, and so the media is not ignoring it.
Gallup's polls for Presidential approval include all adults; which means about a tenth of those being polled are expected to be resident aliens.
Rasmussen, by contrast, only polls registered voters; and uses a series of screening questions to determine whether they are likely voters. Only 'likely voters' are included in the results. I don't know what their screening questions are, but their polls using this methodology consistently swing more Republican than ones that don't.
That does not mean they're biased (well, it does, but they are trying to bias them in the direction of predicting the results of elections); since people who don't vote are more likely to lean Democratic than Republican (this is a consistent finding - some examples here if needed).

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 158 of 710 (800169)
02-20-2017 12:52 PM
Reply to: Message 156 by vimesey
02-20-2017 12:20 PM


Re: Poor sad England, poor sad Europe
For your amusement; the two petitions presented to government regarding Trump's visit. Both got the requisite 100,000 signatories requiring a response, though on a different order of magnitude,
First, the one under discussion, signed by 1.9 million:
quote:
Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the UK in his capacity as head of the US Government, but he should not be invited to make an official State Visit because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.
Second, the counter-petition signed by 300,000:
quote:
Donald Trump should be invited to make an official State Visit because he is the leader of a free world and U.K. is a country that supports free speech and does not believe that people that appose our point of view should be gagged.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 168 of 710 (800185)
02-20-2017 3:31 PM
Reply to: Message 163 by Theodoric
02-20-2017 2:07 PM


Re: Poor sad England, poor sad Europe
Is the spelling problem actually in the original counter proposal?
I guess they could have meant appose, but that would be weird.
Spelling and idiosyncratic grammar were copied verbatim from the original.
I particularly liked that Trump is described as leader of 'a free world'. Just one of many in the multipolar age in which we live.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 229 of 710 (800295)
02-21-2017 5:44 PM
Reply to: Message 197 by Faith
02-21-2017 1:21 PM


Re: The Sweden flap
About the Sweden remark by Trump.
It isn't clear exactly what Trump was referring to, but it could have been lots of different reports on what is going on in Sweden. He said he got it from Fox News, and it's possible. He may have the date wrong. But there's SO much out there about the crime rate in Sweden going up because of the Muslim immigrants it could have come from anywhere.
The focus on the specifics of Trump's misstatement or lack of clarity is of course a version in itself of fake news to distract from the important point, that Sweden is suffering a huge crime problem as a result of Muslim immigration, which Trump used as one example to explain why we need to be careful about taking in Muslim refugees.
The problem turns out to be the stranglehold of political correctness on Europe and on Sweden. They cannot admit to the crime problem because that would be "racist." If it's racist we're talking about Muslim immigrants as the cause.
No, the problem turns out to be that the most powerful country in the world is now ruled by an executive whose policy is based not on careful analysis; but on things he vaguely remembers hearing on a documentary on Fox News yesterday.
I never thought a President in my lifetime would make me look back on GWB fondly.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 498 of 710 (800996)
03-02-2017 1:27 PM
Reply to: Message 466 by Faith
03-01-2017 10:36 PM


Re: it's hard to walk with only right feet ...
Right, smack dab in the middle. Which does surprise me somewhat since even I think of myself as identifiably on the right. But the reason I brought it up was that RAZD said I must be reading his chart from the point of view of the VERY far right and I don't think that's true. My midline score at least supports my idea that it's more likely that "Mainstream" has gone Leftist (and that EvC is SO far Left it looks neutral to y'all).
Hi Faith. The problem with the Political Compass quiz is that it's written by people who are themselves far to the liberal left. Whilst they may have tried to be fair with their questions, their own bias has led them to the state where reasonable answers skew everybody's results towards the bottom left quarter. To actually get substantially into the authoritarian right quadrant you have to agree with some fairly hateful comments, as that's how the authors see the far right.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 615 of 710 (801610)
03-08-2017 1:07 PM
Reply to: Message 612 by Faith
03-08-2017 9:57 AM


Re: More evidence of the horrors in Europe for you all to deny
This one starts out with one minute showing Muslims destroying Christmas trees in shopping areas.
No it doesn't. It starts with some guys pushing a car down an escalator. Then it shows someone in a hoodie setting fire to a Christmas tree. Then it shows a woman in a headscarf throwing something at a Christmas tree (is it a ball? A piece of fruit? Couldn't tell).
So one Christmas tree destroyed. I didn't watch with sound, but a quick bit of reading around uncovered that this was in Brussels and the lads are supposed to have shouted Allahu Akbar, so these were probably Muslims. This happend in 2015. I found two accounts of Christmas trees being set fire to in Europe during Christmas in 2016*. One was by anarchists in Greece and one by a drunk, mentally disturbed English guy. Didn't mention his religion, but 'Ramsay' is not a very Muslim sounding name.
*Actually I found more - but only two on purpose.

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 Message 612 by Faith, posted 03-08-2017 9:57 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 625 of 710 (801636)
03-08-2017 2:25 PM
Reply to: Message 616 by Faith
03-08-2017 1:55 PM


Re: More evidence of the horrors in Europe for you all to deny
You didn't see the Muslims climbing up the tree in the second shot? Shouldn't the destruction of two Christmas trees by Muslims tell you something about Muslims wanting to destroy Christmas trees? The pictures are clear, your hopeful counterevidence is just hearsay.
I thought they were decorating the tree. Not entirely clear what's going on in the second shot. I'm even less clear how you know their religion.
I didn't provide any counterevidence. I just looked around for accounts of people setting fire to Christmas trees. That's how I found out when and where it happened (the New Year's Eve before last). The car being pushed into the metro was also in Brussels and happened on the same night.
The third video I'm at a loss to interpret; but the Christmas tree seems to still be standing at the end.
I am at a loss as to how you consider imagery an argument, but actually finding out what's happening in the images is 'hearsay'.

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 Message 616 by Faith, posted 03-08-2017 1:55 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 629 of 710 (801654)
03-08-2017 2:56 PM
Reply to: Message 626 by Faith
03-08-2017 2:29 PM


Re: More evidence of the horrors in Europe for you all to deny
The men climbing the tree in the second video are pulling things off it. The video identifies itself as being about Muslims. Brussels is in Europe is it not?
What third video?
The video identifies itself as being about Muslims, yes; but that doesn't tell us anything about what's actually happening in the clips. Considering how sceptical you are when you're looking at something that contradicts your viewpoints you're remarkably trusting and credulous when something seems to support your view.
By 'third video' I mean 'third clip in that video'. The first clip is the car being pushed down the metro station in Antwerp, second is the Christmas tree being destroyed; the third is the guys climbing a Christmas tree somewhere.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 630 of 710 (801655)
03-08-2017 3:00 PM
Reply to: Message 628 by Son Goku
03-08-2017 2:48 PM


Re: More evidence of the horrors in Europe for you all to deny
What I mean is, I have noticed a tendency to lump all of Europe together as if it were some mega-county, when something happens in Norway, let's say, I'll often see right-wing American media outlets say it shows how "Europe is spiraling out of control".
This is something engaged in by spouters of political rhetoric of all stripes in the US; whether it's lauding European social democracy or bemoaning the downfall oof European civilisation. The one that always makes me laugh is guns; since whenever people on both sides of the argument start talking about gun laws in Europe, they all seem blissfully unaware that Europe includes countries with veyr high and very low gun ownership; as well as countries with incredibly strict and with very lax gun laws. And yet they always sound very confident in what the 'European' way means.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(2)
Message 640 of 710 (801733)
03-09-2017 11:30 AM
Reply to: Message 639 by Faith
03-09-2017 11:06 AM


Re: Some more evidence of Muslim problem in Europe you can all deny
Long long list of headlines at bottom of the article, I'm copying out only maybe a quarter of them. They are all links to articles.
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to demonstrate with a long list of headlines. The only thing that demonstrates is that there are other people who agree with you - some of whom publish newspapers and websites; and some of whom are elected to office. But we already knew that. One of the main self-appointed defenders of European civilisation against the invading Muslim hordes in this country, a politician called Tomio Okamura, issued the famous warning that 'Every kebab purchased is another step closer to the burka'*.
But the fact that we have people spreading this panic in a part of Europe where there are hardly any Muslims, and where hardly any Muslims immigrants have any interest in coming; suggests that the existence of panic is not sufficient evidence that Europe is falling down around our ears.
*He published an article on his Facebook page, I don't think he originally wrote it.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 653 of 710 (801760)
03-09-2017 1:06 PM
Reply to: Message 641 by Faith
03-09-2017 11:35 AM


Re: Some more evidence of Muslim problem in Europe you can all deny
I knew it would be denied. Since the MSM won't report this stuff and the European press is also disposed to ignore and deny it, the only sources are such as Jihad Watch and the rest of us who care about it. If all you will accept are the MSM then I guess you'll just dismiss anything I can come up with.
But that's not the case. The European press never shuts up about this stuff. They bang on and on and on, which is part of the problem.
There was something of a scandal here last year when it emerged that the editors of Prima TV; one of our major news stations; had instructed their news reporters and writers that they were required to report negatively about refugees, and to present them as a threat, if they wanted to keep their jobs (anyone watching Prima news would have already known that was the case, but someone took the time to leak a recording to prove it).
This is how Lubos Jetmar, the vice-president of one of our largest TV companies, explained the refugee crisis to his staff in a meeting in which they also explained they were required to stick to the editorial line in news reporting:
Nevertheless, I don't know who among you has ever lived in an Arab country. I have [inaudible]. As far as I am aware, Jitka has been to Somalia and I have been [inaudible]. If you experience it for yourself, then you ascertain that you basically can talk about our values, about democracy and stuff like that, for as long as you want, but because the development there has been different, and those millenia of ancestral and tribal traditions, their stance toward [inaudible] male and female sex is absolutely different. They just don't grasp what we say to them. Either they don't want to grasp it, or they don't grasp it. Now I'm speaking from my own experience, from the interviews we did there. They mainly insist that their values are correct. They're not willing to accept that ours exist [inaudible]. What is happening now is... in Libya a million other refugees are waiting for somebody to bring them to Europe. Once they are here and once there are a lot of them, then they will have the tendency to actually, really advocate for their truth, their vision of the world, their religion, their rules. To tell you the truth, I don't know if any of you would want to live to see that - I don't know how old your children are, but I have a nine-year-old girl, and I wouldn't want her to have to wear a burka in 20 years, once she's 30, and to have no rights whatsoever. I really don't. Naturally, I'm aware that the refugees who are [inaudible] are victims and we should aid them. However, on the other hand, what is in that article is also true, that the state is not fulfilling its function, and the state is here to defend its borders and protect [inaudible]. At this moment, that is what the European Union should do and protect Schengen. However, we're just concerned that there can be a much bigger problem arising from this than we are aware of today. For the time being there are a couple hundred thousand of them here, maybe a million, I don't know, but in the moment when there will be many of them here, then they actually won't respect our rules. You all know yourselves that if you go to Saudi Arabia, it doesn't exist that you'd go outside without covering your face. That's what they will advocate here. They will want us to [inaudible]
Your view that Muslim immigrants are an existential threat to Europe is not hidden by some vast conspiracy of the mainstream press. It's openly advocated by much of that press - this is why it's believed by so many people who've never even seen a Muslim immigrant.
ABE - the above quote is of course a translation - he didn't say it in English.
Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 641 by Faith, posted 03-09-2017 11:35 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 654 by Faith, posted 03-09-2017 1:18 PM caffeine has replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1046 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 657 of 710 (801765)
03-09-2017 1:46 PM
Reply to: Message 654 by Faith
03-09-2017 1:18 PM


Re: Some more evidence of Muslim problem in Europe you can all deny
I'd like to think that's common in Europe because the impression I get is that Europe is politically correct to the point of suicidal.
If that message is so common in Europe how come I can't get anyone to agree there's a problem or that anyone in Europe even thinks there is a problem? How come so many national leaders in Europe deny there is a problem? That shows up in my videos along with all the pictures of Muslim violence.
I can't speak for others, but I don't think anyone is denying that people in Europe think there is a problem. A lot of what you post comes from right-wing European sources, after all. If the reason you keep posting it is because you think everyone is denying that such sources exist then you're arguing past each other.
And nobody denies that there are problems, especially not national leaders. You've already posted several headlines about Orban, the nationalist prime minister of Hungary who is virulently anti-Muslim. Our President is of a similar, though less extreme, mindset (he's a big fan of Donald Trump). We just don't agree on what the problems are; nor where we do on how to solve them. I don't think there's a rape epidemic by refugees; but many do, because (in my opinion) of news sources like Prima who agree with your views about Muslims and select their stories and their focus on trying to spread that fear.
Isn't this exactly the sort of behaviour you were referring to as 'fake' earlier in the thread? Picking the facts you choose to mention and skewing the interpretations to fit a particular viewpoint? That's precisely what the horror stories about Muslims in the press that so many of your videos are based in are doing. Immediately prior to explaining why he thought Muslims are a problem in the previous quote I posted Jetmar reminded his staff:
quote:
You are working in the newsroom of a television channel that is a rather influential, strong media outlet and we influence majority opinion in this country.
You influence public opinion and it's your job to report in a way that makes people afraid of Muslims immigrants. Is that fake news, then?

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