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By Paul Geary
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
The New Editor
Are the Democrats trying to create momentum for John Kerry's campaign by influencing the
non-scientific polls that proliferate on Internet news sites?
Both CNN.com and America Online featured prominent banner ads from the Democratic
National Committee on their respective homepages in the hours following the vice-
presidential debate. Similar ads appeared after the presidential debate.
America Online's news headline was: "Who won this battle?" -- beside a picture of Cheney
and Edwards. Under the headline, and invitation to click on "You score their debate" took the
reader to a poll -- with a prominent banner ad from the Democratic National Committee
above the poll.
The ad said "Dick Cheney has been behind every failed Bush policy.... But he's never been
held accountable.... John Edwards held Dick Cheney accountable."
As of 2AM Eastern time, 324,684 people had voted in the unscientific AOL poll. More than
half -- 52% of those polled, said that Edwards won the debate, with 48% saying Cheney had
won.
The Democratic National Committee ad ran on the homepage of CNN.com - a click to the
debate story was not required. However, CNN did not run a poll asking who won the debate
on its homepage, but offered instead a "quickvote" asking did the vice-presidential debate
"help you decide which way you will vote." More than one million people had voted in that
poll as of 2AM Eastern time, and 57% said that the debate had helped them decide.
A poll asking who won the debate on MSNBC.com, with no advertisement from the
Democrats, had John Edwards winning in the opinion of 67% of the 799,990 people who
had responded as of 2AM Eastern time.
Foxnews.com, which not surprisingly did not carry the Democratic National Committee ad,
had Edwards ahead with 53% of more than 175,000 people polled saying he won the debate.
ABCnews.com's poll -- of the scientific variety -- showed that most viewers polled thought
that Cheney had won the debate. The breakdown was Cheney 43%, Edwards 35%, with
19% calling it a tie. ABCnews.com explained however that a slightly larger percentage of the
people in the random sample poll of registered voters identified themselves as Republican.
CBSnews.com, meanwhile, unequivocally declared Edwards the winner based on a 178-
person poll. It said that he "continued the Democratic ticket’s winning streak." The results
of that poll were Edwards 41% (or 78 of the people), Cheney 28% (50 of them), with 31 %
(55 of them) calling it a tie.
The fine print for that poll, however, shows an unusually large margin and methods which
call into question why a strong declaration of victory is warranted from such methods and
results.
The fine print:
"This CBS News poll was conducted online by Knowledge Networks among a nationwide
random sample of 178 uncommitted voters -- voters who don’t yet know who they will vote
for, or who have chosen a candidate but may still change their minds -- who have agreed to
watch the debate. Knowledge Networks, a Silicon Valley company, conducted the poll
among a sample of adult members of its household panel, a nationally representative sample
given access to the Internet via Web TV. The questions were administered using the Internet.
This is a scientifically representative poll of undecided voters’ reaction to the presidential
debate. The margin of sampling error "could be plus or minus 7 percentage points for results
based on the entire sample."
Paul Geary is a contributing editor for The New Editor.
Paul Geary
David Rogers