Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Crazy E-Mail of the Day

Someday I will get a lucid e-mail from a conservative critiquing our polling... but it hasn't happened yet:

From: Jeff Ammon []
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 12:16 PM
To: PPP Information
Subject: What a joke

It amazes me that going through ALL of your polls my friends and family see that you have the Dems all much better rated then the real pollsters like Gallup, Rassmussan, Fox, etc. Why is that? Why do you slant your findings by polling more known dems? It's obvious and we are making known not to pat attention to your polls as they are ALL slanted to the left of the truth. Three weeks from now you're going to see just how ridiculous your attempts have been and you can all go cry in your beer.

YOu should ba ashamed that you can't hear and feel the peoples disgust.


Chuck T said...

Apparently Mr. Ammon hasn't noticed that your polls have been among the most accurate this year. Secondly, I haven't noticed too many polls by Gallup on individual state races. Most of their polling has been nationwide tracking polls--not individual states, so it's hard to compare Gallup and PPP. Third, I don't see too many differences between PPP and the recent Ras or Fox surveys--except they may have the GOP candidate up a point or two--in some cases--bottom line is that all of them show several races within the margin of error or too close to say how they will come out. Even Ras polling for the last couple of days has detected a more democratic scenerio. It could be that Dems are just waking up and starting to pay attention and as the likely voter poll increases with more dems then some of these polls where the GOP had been leading will get closer.

MilesC56 said...

I'm pretty sure its Rasmussen and Fox who are the biased pollsters...

I think PPP is the most reliable pollster out there.

Kevin M said...

This goes to show, if you are going to send an angry email - proofread!

Jayant Reddy said...

Tom, funny e-mail, and yes the guy is a kook, but are you sure you want to include the guy's name and e-mail address here like you do?

I have no idea whether there is any legal or even moral privacy right for the guy's e-mail address in this instance, but even without that, is it worth the risk that the guy gets bombarded with hostile e-mails and then turns around and gets p.o.'d at you? You gain nothing from that as far as I can guess.

Just my suggestion to black out his name and e-mail address.

Otherwise, you guys are good pollsters and I respect your work, even though there are little quirks in your results that I question from time to time.

Land's End said...

I am a long time conservative Republican and find PPP's numbers to be among the most accurate around. I also fine the analysis to be solid even if I don't always agree with its conclusions. I'll take PPP over most others any day.

DBL said...

Should we assume that your lack of lucidity from the right only applies to emails or to the comments section too?

Fox doesn't do any polls. They use Rasmussen for their polls. I analyzed PPP's polls with polls of other pollsters taken about at the same time. PPP was the most Democratic, but only 1.2% more so than Rasmussen and 1.4% more than CNN/Time. SurveyUSA, however, has been 3.6% more Republican, while Quinnipiac has been 7.4% more.

Who's reliable? We shall see. There is insufficient data on how the pollsters have performed in general election races this year.

Quinnipiac could be right, but you usually would want to take the numbers that happen the most often. When I look at the numbers, I take that into account and know that PPP's numbers are probably pretty good.

PPP is the only pollster that puts themselves out there with a blog and their transparency is far above the competition. Their interpretations of the numbers on here is usually off, but we're relying on the numbers not their analysis. Of course none of this matters, because the only numbers that count are those cast on November 2.

Zornorph said...

What a joker. I lean GOP, but I wonder if that clueless person knows that PPP was the first one to show a lead for Scott Brown? Or for Raese?

Anonymous said...

I'm a Republican, and I trust you guys a thousand times more than any other pollster. Thank you for bringing consistency to this election and keep up your hard work.

NRH said...

Jayant - There's no legal issue, at least. When you send someone an email, they can do anything they want with it. It's the same as with postal mail; once someone else has received a letter from you, you can't stop them from publicizing it if they want.

As for Rasmussen, at least, well, they're a bunch of hacks. Recall his Republican Bounce polls, all trying to help marginal Republican candidates get their general election campaigns off to a good start after a primary? Rand Paul up 25 in Kentucky, Linda McMahon tied in Connecticut, John Stephen tied in New Hampshire, Sharron Angle up ten in Nevada, and so on. Any poll Rasmussen reports must be taken with a huge grain of salt, and any poll Rasmussen reports within three weeks of a primary ending should be thrown out entirely.

As for Fox polls, you might as well poll Berkeley and then release the results as California-wide figures.

Dustin Ingalls said...


Yes, we appreciate you, wt, and some of the other conservative commenters who actually make substantive points with civility. Rarely, though, do we get anything but angry, illiterate emails from the right. Or from the left, for that matter.

Anonymous said...

I think most people believe polls that they agree with are the polls that are the most credible.

Liberals typically blast Rasmussen or any Fox News affiliated poll. And conservatives typically blast the CBS/NY Times polls because of their weighting techniques.

Average them all together and you'll probably get a good representation of where things stand.

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