This is only an excerpt of the essay. The entire essay takes about 15 minutes to read so 95% of peeps won't read it ... you know why. Anyway, here's a taste, just in case you're interested.
The Title of the essay is "The left's Big Blunder."
One of the topics is "Who is doing the polling?" (This is a critical question and this section explains, in part, why the polls are so often wrong.)
The actual grunt-work of doing public-opinion polling is a low-paying job that doesn't require much (or any) experience. The people asking the "Who will you vote for?" questions either sit in a room for hours on end making repetitive calls, or walk door-to-door in potentially dodgy neighborhoods -- not particularly high-end work.
Who would apply for and accept such a job? Not someone who already has a higher-paying job. Not someone who has experience or skills that would allow them a better career or position. Not someone who is middle-class or middle-aged. Not someone who is wealthy. Generally, I wager, college students, the under-employed and/or the under-educated make up the majority of people who do the actual rubber-meets-the-road polling of asking the questions and writing down the answers.
Though there are no published statistics about the demoographics (lol @ deMOOgraphics) of pollers themselves, the fact that, for example, The Gallup Poll routinely recruits entry-level call-center employees on college campuses lends support to this supposition. And, anecdotally, when I was a college student I briefly worked for a public-opinion call center doing this exact kind of job, and my fellow pollers were almost all college students or underemployed folks, some of whom only worked a limited number of hours per week so as to still qualify for government benefits. Not sure if "deMOOgraphics" was a misspelling or a commentary but I like it.)
Now, as we all know, college students (especially these days) are usually at the apex of left-wing sentiment in their lives' political journey. As has been documented extensively, people tend to get more conservative as they get older and acquire more responsibilities. And contemporary college students are almost all being influenced toward leftist ideologies by the liberal atmosphere on most campuses. Some will later grow out of it and slowly shift to the center or right, but while they're in college, they're in the thrall of their doctrinaire professors. The Obama campaign itself brags that they have the under-25 demographic locked up.
Furthermore, chronically underemployed or unemployed people also tend to support left-leaning and populist candidates -- especially candidates like Obama who are promising free health care, more government benefits, job programs in poor areas, and so on. This is not a controversial supposition: it's also been documented extensively that wealthy people tend to support Republicans who promise to lower taxes, and poorer people tend to support Democrats who promise more handouts.
So, I posit that the vast majority of people actually doing the polling are themselves Obama supporters. Not necessarily the CEOs who own the polling companies, but the people actually picking up the phone and making the calls, or walking door-to-door.
Who would apply for and accept such a job? Not someone who already has a higher-paying job. Not someone who has experience or skills that would allow them a better career or position. Not someone who is middle-class or middle-aged. Not someone who is wealthy. Generally, I wager, college students, the under-employed and/or the under-educated make up the majority of people who do the actual rubber-meets-the-road polling of asking the questions and writing down the answers.
Though there are no published statistics about the demoographics (lol @ deMOOgraphics) of pollers themselves, the fact that, for example, The Gallup Poll routinely recruits entry-level call-center employees on college campuses lends support to this supposition. And, anecdotally, when I was a college student I briefly worked for a public-opinion call center doing this exact kind of job, and my fellow pollers were almost all college students or underemployed folks, some of whom only worked a limited number of hours per week so as to still qualify for government benefits. Not sure if "deMOOgraphics" was a misspelling or a commentary but I like it.)
Now, as we all know, college students (especially these days) are usually at the apex of left-wing sentiment in their lives' political journey. As has been documented extensively, people tend to get more conservative as they get older and acquire more responsibilities. And contemporary college students are almost all being influenced toward leftist ideologies by the liberal atmosphere on most campuses. Some will later grow out of it and slowly shift to the center or right, but while they're in college, they're in the thrall of their doctrinaire professors. The Obama campaign itself brags that they have the under-25 demographic locked up.
Furthermore, chronically underemployed or unemployed people also tend to support left-leaning and populist candidates -- especially candidates like Obama who are promising free health care, more government benefits, job programs in poor areas, and so on. This is not a controversial supposition: it's also been documented extensively that wealthy people tend to support Republicans who promise to lower taxes, and poorer people tend to support Democrats who promise more handouts.
So, I posit that the vast majority of people actually doing the polling are themselves Obama supporters. Not necessarily the CEOs who own the polling companies, but the people actually picking up the phone and making the calls, or walking door-to-door.
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