Why government statistics are a better thing than this, and we go ’round in circles.
-Update: apparently Paul Sniderman was involved in at least helping to score the survey. It still isn’t clear whether he helped develop it, although he has ages of experience in teaching race relations. His name runs back to the Clinton years with his first book, “The Scar of Race” published in 1993.-
Riverdaughter has a good blog on her view of the recent AP Yahoo survey pontificated upon in Politico. She refers to Politico’s take in the link below:
The AP is working for the Republicans
Posted on September 21, 2008 by riverdaughter
[How else do we explain the AP-Yahoo study that purports to show that one third of Democrats will not vote for Obama because of his race. Only 59% of Clintonistas will vote for Obama (Really? We’ve been that successful?! Alright! {{high-fives all around}}). So there must be a correlation between the reluctance of these former Hillary people and their prejudices….]
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/the-ap-is-working-for-the-republicans/
Or not.
I have an attendant view. I was disturbed by Politico’s article; it was bereft of data and contained only conclusions, date of the report’s publication, and the reference to AP-Yahoo. So following the breadcrumbs, I found the report, apparently published by Knowledge Networks. (KN) HERE is a 2002 bizjournal article about them and listed below. They are substantially a political testing group. Name of KN as the actual surveyor was found through the Times Record News, a Scripps paper, in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Friday, September 6, 2002
Series D funding
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal – by Neil Orman
Related News
Knowledge Networks raises $15.5 million
Knowledge Networks of Menlo Park, which provides businesses with information to help them market to consumers, has announced that it has raised $15.5 million in new funding.
Participants in the series D round included existing investors Oak Investment Partners, Maveron, Alloy Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners and Oak Hill Venture Partners.
Knowledge Networks provides information about consumer markets to its business customers.
The company keeps a large national panel of households which it equips with interactive TV devices. Viewers give their opinions in weekly 15-minute surveys and provide information about their viewing and purchasing behavior.
The 4-year-old startup markets its service to consumer research firms. Knowledge Networks partners with Microsoft Corp.’s MSNTV unit in Mountain View to equip survey participants with interactive devices.
“It’s getting increasingly difficult for consumer researchers to do telephone surveys because people have privacy manager and caller ID,” says John Lewis, the president and CEO of Knowledge Networks. “They prefer to participate on their own time in a medium of their choosing.”
Knowledge Networks was founded in 1998 by two Stanford University professors — Norman Nie and Doug Rivers. Mr. Nie and Mr. Rivers are experts in the fields of political science and statistics. Mr. Rivers served as the CEO until the beginning of this year, when the company recruited Mr. Lewis to take the helm.
Mr. Lewis, a consumer marketing veteran, was formerly executive vice president of ACNielsen Corp. and worked as a senior executive at The NutraSweet Co.
Knowledge Networks is not profitable yet, but Mr. Lewis says he anticipates that the company will break even in the second quarter of 2003.
Neil Orman is a member of the Business Journal’s technology team.
This group has actually called me on one occasion, early in the presidential season. However, since I did not know them, and they could not confirm in a cold call why I should give them information, I declined to be interviewed. In our new world, I think phone surveys have become problematic for both interviewers and interviewees.
In any event, they did publish a list of recent surveys. See below:
AP-YAHOO! NEWS ELECTION SURVEYS CONDUCTED BY KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS
In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Associated Press and Yahoo! have published polls about voter reactions to the presidential candidates using KnowledgePanel®:
09/19/08 – People prefer Obama over McCain as teacher – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
09/19/08 – Obama tops McCain as football-watching buddy – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/18/08 -Poll: McCain’s backers less fired up than Obama’s – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/08/08 – Poll: Pet owners prefer McCain over Obama – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/07/08 – Old Guy Vs Change: McCain, Obama Images Take Shape – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/03/08 – The ‘mushy middle’ hard to reach for Obama, McCain – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/03/08 – A look at the political center – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/02/08 – Obama would get more barbecue invitations than McCain – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/02/08 – Poll: Public cool to Michelle, doesn’t know Cindy – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
06/26/08 – Obama Winning Over Former Clinton Supporters – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
04/21/08 – Economy the top worry, but barely affecting votes – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
04/18/08 – Ongoing nomination fight hurting Clinton more than Obama – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
04/17/08 – By winning back unhappy GOP voters, McCain makes it a race – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
02/01/08- Spend as they may, candidates find public opinion hard to change – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
01/31/08 – With ‘change’ in mind, voters voice expectations for the next president – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
If you want to download one of these and the methods used they appear to be available on the pages.
http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/news/newsclips/ap-yahoo.html
You will note the survey to which Politico refers, at least as of today, is NOT posted on this page. That survey was apparently conducted between 8/27/08 and 9/5/08, right during the weeks of the conventions.
Here is the Yahoo page of the survey in question, with a download of the poll results and poll methodology
If you click on the poll methodology you find that unnamed Stanfordites developed this poll. KN, though their people hail from Stanford, appear to have only conducted the poll. Or perhaps the KN network was used in some way by the Stanfordites outside of the KN business itself. In drilling deeper, and clicking the link on this page returns us to the KN base of method information for reviewers, not survey development.
In the end then, we don’t know what this survey means, or whether, especially in light of the dates conducted, it has validity. We don’t know the developers, the intent, nor can we impute political motivations from the survey itself. Immediately after this test was conducted; two more surveys were done by KN. In one, Obama was found to be favored over McCain as a football television buddy. In another, Obama was favored as a teacher. So apparently we think he is okay to have in our house and with our kids.
Finally, on ABC’s This Week Sunday show today, George brought up the survey to Donna Brazille, the only one asked about it. She of course had the standard Obama answer, and I must say looked as though she expected the question.
So, potentially spurious or at least opaque, survey, interesting timing, and these known players: X men (?) in Stanford, KN a bunch of venture capitalists, and the associated people named above, AP, Yahoo, Times Record, Texas, California, Scripps, Politico, Kuhn, Brazille, Stephanopoulos, and ABC.
Add Paul Sniderman.
Hmmm.
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