Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

Hey did you see RP on Maher last weekend? That went very well. Glad to see that he's got a scheduled appearance on the Daily Show w/Jon Stewart as well. Y'all had better start showing the public something good about your chosen candidate or RP is going to run away with this thing.

Are the same people voting in multiple polls? Probably. Are they voting multiple times in the same poll? Probably not -- or at least, not any more than supporters for other candidates. Checking the IP address, using cookies, and validating e-mail addresses would prevent the vast majority of that from happening.

Thus, I don't think "spamming" is the correct word, though "swarming" might be. While it can be annoying for websites that prefer other candidates, it does show how excited some people are about the election. Rather than ban a particular candidate, I think other candidates should differentiate themselves from the pack in order to generate the same excitement -- people tend to root for the underdog, and a person standing for his convictions in the face of widespread opposition is attractive to many. For example, John McCain impressed me with his principled stand against torture, especially since he was the only person on the stage to have endured it (granted, he lost most of that goodwill with his stand on immigration, but that's another subject).

Finally, the Republican Party has to decide whether their platform is a big tent or a pup tent. If they can't defend their views against a person in their own party, how will they fare in the general election? The Iraq issue isn't going to go away between now and Novemeber 2008.

By implication, you're saying that every single online poll without exception is cheatable. Does that really make any sense at all? Not one has done anything to keep the numbers corrent and prevent shenanegans? Not a single one on the entire internet? Please.

Link

The only polls that can be spammed are set up that way on purpose. The rest are valid and you can only vote ONCE. So the spamming is not true and Margolies is a FRAUDSTER.

See also (Categories of Links to Major Media Stories on Ron Paul):

Ron Paul in the Media
http://ronpaul.wetpaint.com/page/Ron+Paul+in+the+Media

Ron Paul on the Internet
http://ronpaul.wetpaint.com/page/Ron+Paul+on+the+Internet

Ron Paul Websites
http://ronpaul.wetpaint.com/page/Ron+Paul+Websites

Latest Ron Paul News
http://ronpaul.wetpaint.com/page/Latest+Ron+Paul+News

Ron Paul Debates
http://ronpaul.wetpaint.com/page/Ron+Paul+Debates

How do you define spamming?
Let us do a basic numbers exercise:
Ron Paul has over 23,000 "friends" on Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/ronpaul2008 - I am sure he has 10s of thousands of supporters who don't have myspace profiles - myself included - but let us work with a number we can verify)
If those friends are anything like me or other supporters I come across, they likely google for any Ron Paul news, polls, whatever else they can find.
Is it that outrageous that only about third of his friends (8,322 http://www.gopstrawpolls.com/pollresults.php) voted for him - and will basically accept no substitute?
Is it spamming if 8,322 people vote for their preferred candidate? Would you rather they don't vote for their candidate to make the numbers seem "reasonable" to the poll hosts?
Why is the conclusion whenever a pollster gets an answer they don't like that "spamming"/cheating is to blame when the numbers are low enough to be accounted for by supporters voting once each?
The conclusions you and Margolis reach aren't supported by any evidence or simple logic.

These kinds of accusations are laughable. The Sanjaya fan pic belongs with the Rudy McRomney crowd. This country is going to be taken back by the Truth, and of course, they "can't handle" it. People are waking up, finally - thank God. Whether Ron Paul wins or not is completely irrelevant - so long as he keeps spreading the message on a national stage.

I "voted" for Ron Paul once each on two or three DIFFERENT polls....I hardly think that is "spamming", and I forwarded those polls to others who could vote as they chose. Ron Paul was not the only candidate listed. The responses to my forwarded messages about Ron Paul tell me we are indeed SWARMING around this candidate. I wonder why? I send to people of all the various Parties.

"Spam" is a term generally associated with unwanted email. But internet polls by definition are soliciting votes. It can hardly be spam if lots of people accept that invitation and many of them happen to support a particular candidate.

There are situations in which someone will write a script to generate multiple votes for a particular candidate, and that would indeed be considered cheating. (Cheating by the initiator, at least. I've also seen opponents in an issue or candidate poll respond to a robot by writing their own competing scripts, and I don't object to such a leveling of the playing field.) But these days there are mechanisms to minimize this problem, and any good poll will do so. I have little sympathy for internet surveys which install no protections against multiple voting and then complain when the inevitable happens.

But all that is almost besides the point. Internet polls are entertainment, nothing more! As a measure of actual support, any poll which permits self-selected, not-random entrants is totally worthless. At best an internet poll might be able to represent its results as a crude measure of the passion of voters. In which case the various internet polls are accurately reflecting the fact that Ron Paul has many extremely ardent supporters even though he barely shows up as a blip in the more statistically rigorous surveys of the voting public.

I find it laughable that some internet pollsters are getting all huffy over the fact that their results bear no relationship to true voter sentiment. These pollsters denigrate their voters as "spammers" because they aren't carefully self-selecting themselves in the "correct" proportions. Why, that must be unfair! That must be dishonest! That's not producing the desired results! It makes the poll less accurate!

An accurate self-selected poll is an oxymoron. That's reality. Deal with it.

If spamming is a realistic excuse, then no matter who wins a poll we must suspect spamming.

We don't spam! We are however fairly numerous in number on the internet compared to other candidates supporters. We are also very engaged and stay up to date. I do not believe that the enthusiasm of an excited base is bad. It definitely is a good thing for the Republicans that are a bit downtrodden right now.

Some of the above posters are correct about systems being in place, especially in big polling sites, to stop multiple voting. Go ahead and try it yourself. The other thing is that spamming would be open to any of the supporters of any candidate. What this reflects more is very high enthusiasm amongst a segment of the Republican base.