Friday, August 22, 2008

KLRvu's Murky World

Short version (long version here):

- The Guelph poll is not a secret attempt by Tory operatives to put local Libs to sleep by providing them with a good, but fake, news story.

- The Poll was allegedly done on the penny of KLRvu proprietor Allan Bruinooge to " raise the profile of his young firm", a claim that, given this, seems credible.

My impression is that KLRvu is positioning itself as a "polls for cheap" alternative to the big houses, with the problems inherent in automated polling (phone spamming) technology overcome by the sheer size of the samples it is possible to gather.

Further background on KLRvu here.

7 comments:

Ti-Guy said...

That was a surprisingly good piece of journalism by David Aiken. It was interesting to read about the legal considerations for election polling.

with the problems inherent in automated polling (phone spamming) technology overcome by the sheer size of the samples it is possible to gather.

I don't think any sample size can overcome this methodology, precisely because it does not collect data to inform any assertions made regarding the soundness of the results. Sure, we can "guess" and extrapolate based on other things we think we know about the population, but that won't say anything about the sample itself.

Beijing York said...

I'm not getting the business synergy between laser engraving and polling. Also, are there no conflict of interest issues in hiring an MP's brother to do your party's polling work?

Ti-Guy said...

Also, are there no conflict of interest issues in hiring an MP's brother to do your party's polling work?

Modern society no longer considers "conflict of interest" a moral issue, it seems. It all started when cronyism, nepotism and influence peddling were re-branded as "networking" by coked-up yuppie scum back in the early 80's.

Oxford County Liberals said...

I wrote the polling firm a couple of days ago and asked them how many people - out of 3396 polled - hung up or refused to answer when they got the automated phone call. I'm still awaiting a reply on that.

bigcitylib said...

Scott,

Did your email get through? I've tried to write a couple of times and got a "mailbox full" failure message.

Frank Frink said...

Why would you be surprised, Ti-Guy? Akin is an excellent journalist. One of the best we still have in the traditional media.

Ti-Guy said...

Why would you be surprised, Ti-Guy? Akin is an excellent journalist. One of the best we still have in the traditional media.

It wasn't surprising coming from Aken; it was surprising that it was good journalism.

I threw most journalists into the toilet during the lead up to the Iraq invasion and flushed the rest of them during the last federal election. It'll take a long time and a lot of hard work for them to redeem themselves as a group, if that's even still possible.