The OFFICIAL United States Presidential Election Thread!

[Dinner]

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
This could be old here, but I haven't seen it mentioned even thought you people are pretty political bunch. Not that I've read everything.

http://www.betavote.com/

Pretty interesting, even the US has it 25 to 75 % there. What does that mean, if you are likely to find that site you'd rather vote Kerry?
Now the people on the right here will without hesitatiton say "only the liberals have voted in that one!" Or they have cheated more etc...
And the left will say it's proof of Kerrys ownage!

So my guestion is, is that a good indicator of the views on the internet?

Moderates and leftists tend to be younger and more computer literate so you aren't getting a satistical sampling on that site. Also people can vote more then once so it's not very accurate.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

But anyway, the point is that this is something I merely suspect. I can't back it up that well.

So it's an emotional decision on your part is what you are saying?

There's some reason behind it, (see what I posted above) but I think it might be a little based on emotion. I want to think that at least something good will come from a Kerry Presidency, so I hope that he will at least listen to the far left base on Gay Marriage once he's in office. He listens to them on everything else, anyway...

[Dinner]

Niger and Pitcairn Island are the only countries voting for Bush!

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
This could be old here, but I haven't seen it mentioned even thought you people are pretty political bunch. Not that I've read everything.

http://www.betavote.com/

Pretty interesting, even the US has it 25 to 75 % there. What does that mean, if you are likely to find that site you'd rather vote Kerry?
Now the people on the right here will without hesitatiton say "only the liberals have voted in that one!" Or they have cheated more etc...
And the left will say it's proof of Kerrys ownage!

So my guestion is, is that a good indicator of the views on the internet?

Internet polls are not at all reliable. If a liberal site wants to "prove" that foreigners support Kerry, they can tell their users to go vote 10 times for Kerry as an "Austrian" or whatever.

[Imran Siddiqui]

There's some reason behind it, (see what I posted above)

The 'reason' is a streach. Just as much of a streach as someone saying Bush's statments that he'd accept civil unions is just a lie.

[Jaguar]

I honestly don't know why you're bothering me about this. Politicians have personal views different from the platforms they run on all the time.



Another thing I noticed about the betavote site, BTW:

Afghanistan has something like 3000 votes, or about 5 times as many as Japan. I doubt there are 5 times as many English-speaking Internet-literate Afghans as Japanese. I bet at least three quarters of the "Afghan" and "Iraqi" votes are cast by people from other countries.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I just wanted you admit that you are basing your view on the candidate based on emotion .

[Jaguar]

That doesn't really make sense, though. I want Kerry to lose, so why would I assign him a view I agree with?

[Ramo]

'Cuz you were originally justifying Republican dirty tricks?

[cinch]

On the eve of the election, I beg of you, mis hermanos americanos:

Right the ship! Let's get back on the road of cooperation! Keep the progressive spirit of America alive!

And now, if you'll excuse me, I must trot out ol' trustworthy:

"If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief-I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper-that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one."

-Barack Obama
___________________________________

Vote as you must, but know the outside world is not completely full of above-it-all smug-types. Some of us care.

Let me love you, America!

[cinch]

Um... nice work with the sig, Ramo.

That's what I get from being away from these fora for awhile.


Ah well... I'll leave my post up there for emphasis.

[Jaguar]

I do love GOP dirty tricks. They make elections exciting.



But seriously, I have thought that Kerry personally supports gay marriage for a while now. And that's a good thing.

[Drachasor]

Ramo, I like that Sig so much I made it mine too.



-Drachasor

[tinyp3nis]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Moderates and leftists tend to be younger and more computer literate so you aren't getting a satistical sampling on that site. Also people can vote more then once so it's not very accurate.

Good points but...


Yes, but does being computer literate mean you are more like to use the internet?
If internet users are mostly moderates and leftist and younger, then of course the poll results are no surprise (well actually 11-88 is high but...). My question was and is about the internet.
Yeah I knew that "more than once" and other cheating would be mentioned, but I have no idea if the other side has or is willing to cheat more. I think people would be tempted to cheat with the small countries to get them look in favor of either candidate. Since they don't have many votes to beging with few cheated votes can make a difference.
They mentioned something about removing votes from certain country because they were from the same place, so they just might be even monitoring it.

I have a problem with blidly assuming that the other side has cheated more just because the results are slighty surprising, of course internet likes Kerry more but that much? The question still stands, and I'm also interested if someone has heard about this site and knows something other than just common sense/nonsense can tell (ie proof about their bias) and can make a good case for it being wrong.

I'm still surprised about the US numbers.

[Jaguar]

Consider this.

At http://www.gamespy.com there is a poll on whether you're looking forward to Halo 2 or Half-Life 2 more. The poll has been linked to by halo.bungie.org, planethalo.com, and bungie.net, the three biggest Halo fansites. Halo 2 is winning by a large margin. That's not because internet users necessarily like Halo more. It's because the Halo fansites are getting out the vote.

So an internet poll isn't even an accurate survey of internet users. It's only a semiaccurate survey of the people who care enough to go to that site.