What's the point of DUing/Freeping polls?

Whether we're doing a poll on CNN, Sean Hannity's site, Fox News, wherever... how many people's opinions are driven by what they see in polls not conducted by professional pollsters like Gallop?

To all you people - DUers and the lurking/posting trolls - who engage in DUing and Freeping electronic polls, I challenge you to find just one example of how this has made a difference in determining a person's vote or in affecting policy. I don't think you can find anything out of this other than the fact that you wasted time.

...good, clean, juvenile fun. Why not do it? I think if anyone took them seriously anyway, no one would be trolling them.

We've really had enough of one-sided media and phoney polls. I can guarantee you that freepers will be shocked, shocked, that there exists another point of view and that people dare to express it in their forum.

(I graduated in 87). . .I learned in Poly Sci classes that people want to vote for a winner-they want to be on the winning side of a positions or candidate--hence, the influence of polls on voting patterns.

Say it isn't so!

I think people DU polls because it feels good. You like your team to win. When I used to go the see the Spurs in San Antonio they had dot races. A red, blue, green and yellow animated dot "raced" around a track on the Jumbo-tron. You had absolutely no control of which won, but people got into it every time. It was fun - it was ridiculous.

Similarly, with DUing of polls, you even have a sense of bragging rights - you can say that you see the tide shifting - or whatever silly thing we say to convince ourselves people are beginning to understand the evils of Bush*. Its kinda fun, its silly.

I imagine most everyone here assumes the polls are meaningless - yeah, its a waste of time, but its pretty harmless.

one here who finds it to be stupid. I'll shut up then, but like that dot race you were talking about...

but its interesting in a stupid way. By day I am a statistician so I really have no excuse for participating :). Personally, I think its fun and funny, but not worth the bandwidth its printed on!

PS - the Red dot rocks!

Also, it lets media moguls see who's paying attention.

Thanks for the chuckle.

Ever hear of a little thing called the bandwagon effect?

And we DUers, who still the vast majority vote singly in polls honestly, wouldn't think of doing this shit anyway. But if all internet polls are to be skewed and fucked up and worthless, let them be so from both directions.

The Busheviks have had minimal resistance on all fronts for a decade. An open field to spin their lies, deceits, frauds. Nobody knew what the hell was going on (well, a few did) but just that something was VERY WRONG. They must now be resisted as vigorously as possible, simultaneously, an all fronts.

I agree with you that its just silly and serves No purpose other then to stroke ones own ego. I know i wont get on-line to do a site poll and I wont leave a site I am on to DU one.

Thanks for being a voice of rationality.

It may not seem like much, but for years, progressives just sat on the sidelines while the right wing was allowed to run riot over the radio airwaves, Internet, etc.

Sorry, Rationality, but I've grown very tired of all the one-sidedness, and I now appreciate every opportunity available to speak out, even if it's with a click of the mouse.

Have never looked at O'REILLY's site, but he constantly talks about his (unscientific) polls where his subscribers vote at 90% levels ditto-ing positions O'REILLY advocates anyway. Nobody is swayed by this.

In the CNN polls, there are often 250,000 responses. The scores or even hundreds of DU-ers jumping in on these polls are not having ANY effect on "DU-ing" the polls. The good news is that almost all of those cited at DU have been WAY to our side of the spectrum.

It's fun, it's team spirit. Nothing to shoot down.

first, let me be clear that i never vote more than once in a poll ...

second, while i agree that the polls are not statistically valid, I strongly disagree that they have no influence ...

take the example of bush's recent speech ... absent polls, bush sends all his little people out to the talk shows and they all stay on message ... "the president showed not only that he was a compassionate man but blah blah blah ..."

now, imagine that all the major networks and small, local newspapers all over the country run there silly little polls ... and imagine that millions of people get to see that 90% of those surveyed thought the speech was all for political purposes or didn't give them confidence that bush had a clear vision for Iraq ...

maybe all those viewers and readers think as you do ... it's just an online poll and its nonsense ... but, at a minimum, the administration's credibility has been called into question ... and they might just remember the poll results long enough to state it as fact to their co-workers ... i see these polls as free advertising ...

and it takes so little time to cast a vote online, I say why not give it a try ....

When the results of an online poll gets aried on television, say on Wolf Blitzer's program, the results that support the liberal side of the poll (providing there is one) is often reported as an "unscientific poll" but when the conservative side is ahead in the poll, it's reported as truth.
I don't know if anyone besides Blitzer does this, but I've watched him report the results and mention the "unscientificness" of the poll when its results favor liberals. Nearly threw a brick at the tv when he did that.