Gravis Marketing: Polls and Reporting II
In August I discussed the possibility that people were trying to use a bit of money to fiddle with the poll of polls. My hypothesis was that now that averages of polls are getting more attention than the well known polls taken alone (a reasonable change in emphasis) it is possible to make the average poll for a candidate look better by setting up a polling organisation with no track record and credibility and issuing fiddled polls (so that it will never have any credibility). Since political operatives all agree that a poll which would be good news if value is good for a candidate, the bogus polls would be designed to give the favored candidate high mis-measured support.
Since this requires no lack of money and a lack of scruples, I would guess that the new pollsters who only hope to get tossed into an average favor Republicans.
My August list started with Foster McCollum White Baydoun which for which Nate Silver (of fivethirtyeight) estimated an 11% pro Republican house effect. It also included “We Ask America” and “Purples Strategies.” The CEO of Purple Strategies is Alex Castellanos who is not only a political operative but also notorious for the most recent (now blessedly decadesold) ad which directly appealed to white anger about race (the white hands ad). Now he and a Dino who handled pr for BP are giving fair and balanced polling (fair and balanced being used in the Fox News sense).
Rasmussen is different. I think their success in pulling perceptions towards Republicans in spite of their demonstrated statistical bias (3.8% in 2010) is the cause of the new strategy.
After that too long introduction, I have an addition to the list Gravis Marketing. People much better informed than I about polls and pollsters haven’t heard of them. They have a Republican house effect. according to Nate Silver Importantly, Silver only partially removes house effects from his averages, and other aggregators don’t remove them at all. Back to the first link to Silver discussing Foster McCollum White Baydoun
We do not subtract out the entire 11-point house effect from the polling firm’s results — the model allows polling firms to retain some of their house effect — but the model does adjust the poll substantially, treating it as about a 7-point lead for Mr. Romney rather than a 15-point one
Aggregators TPM and Real Clear Politics who (very very defensibly) use simpler easier to understand approaches have Ohio shifting from a small Obama lead to a tiny Obama lead. Two of the 6 polls in the RCP average are from members of my list of suspect pollsters,, there is also a purple strategies poll) and one is from Rasmussen. So I suspect that the average is half bogus. IIRC the Gravis poll caused enough of a shift to change the TPM rating from leans Obama to Toss up with dramatic effects on their automatic race summary (no link as it updates continuously).
This, I think, is the whole purpose of the brand new Gravis marketing political polling operation.
Update: But I don’t know this. I don’t have enough data from Gravis Marketing to make any firm inference, since marketing is important and using different resources for this also helps, so companies like SEO Edinburgh | Candy Marketing are really useful in this area. I can’t tell much about any single pollster. My view is that there is a brand new pollster group effect which is significantly Republican.
I can’t tell anything with confidence about any single brand new pollster (except that Foster McCollum White Baydoun sure doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job).
That’s what I suspected as well. So, I googled it and this is what came up. Well, it’s not beyond the realm of probabilities for the Mittionare.
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Ok, I did some digging and I see that the Gravis website looks a little creepy in that the “About” section doesn’t provide any details on the firms founders or management…it’s also suspiciously Republicany.
I dug a bit further, still using only google, and see that the firm’s founder contributed to $250 to Rubio (R), $250 the other FL senatorial candidate (R), and $300 to the Republican Party this year. In 2008, he contributed $$ to Hillary when she was running against Barack and $$ to McCain in the general.
Fishy fishy…well, it is based in Florida. To. Be. Expected.
I appreciate you writing about Gravis Marketing. I am not as smart as you are giving me credit for. We are not a republican firm. Our polls are independant and we don’t care who wins.
I think that one clear thing that you did not write about, was we had 2 conventions and no one polled in Ohio other then us, After the GOP Convention, we polled in Ohio and saw a bump for Romney and no bump in Florida.
Regarding the contributions you have to be kidding, a $300 donation is 2002 to the RNC, 2 $250 donations to Florida politicians and a $250 donation to Hilary Clinon makes me biased is laughable.
I will be happy to discuss our polling. To be clear we are non-partisan. Call me any time 407-242-1870 doug@gravismarketing.com
I will update to clarify that I can’t tell much about any single pollster. My view is that there is a brand new pollster group effect which is significantly Republican.
I can’t tell anything about any single brand new pollster (except that Foster McCollum White Baydoun sure doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job).
The Gravis guy is definitely a paid operative. His latest Colorado poll results includes the following comment: “Well, Obama has the edge among those that think it’s
ok for one gender to terminate a baby’s life…”.
Not a statement that a non-partisan pollster should ever make.
The poll was conducted when Sandra Fluke in town in August. We polled woman and asked them
Numerous questions. So you should look at the questions we asked.
The poll was conducted when Sandra Fluke in town in August. We polled woman and asked them
Numerous questions. So you should look at the questions we asked.
From Gravis Marketing’s website:
“WELCOME TO GRAVIS MARKETING
“Gravis Marketing
“Providing the political advertising software and services that get the campaign responses and results you want.”
Getting the results you want, indeed. This firm doesn’t have the word “marketing” in its title for nothing.
Doug, since you start our business in 2009, three years ago, did you release any previous polls at all? Let us see so people can make good assessment for your poll quality.
By the way, your answer to your contribution is shaky. You do not challenge other’s claims, instead just water down your partisanship. Donate to Clinton alone means little for your independence claim.
We have another poll coming out tomorrow and it looks like it will look good for The President. We have had 2 conventions and the polls have fluctuated. Regarding the donations, I don’t think my answers are shaky. I’m
33 years old and in my life time I have donated under $1000 to republicans, $300 of it right after 911, and $250 to Hilary Clinton. I have done business with republicans, democrats and independents. If you can’t believe my polls because I have donated under $1000 fair enough. I believe the republican donations were during primaries not the general election $250 to Rubio during his primary at a friends fundraiser and $250 to Diebel who was a friend of the family. I have been on the radio numerous times the recording are online. I’m right down the middle
Instead of judging the few polls that I have released. Give me a month before you judge because I am being genuine. I will be happy to talk further with anyone doug@gravismarketing.com 4072421870 mobile
Sorry for my grammar. I am at the airport with my 18 month old on an IPhone
Regarding precious polls, we provide a platform for our customers to use. We developed proprietary software for GOTV we are a small company, we could not afford to be neutral.
Fair answer but the point is none can assessment your poll quality as you are so new and some of your poll is quite out flier.
To me, a credible poll firm needs to have foot workers, instead just thousand miles away dialing.
Sorry for my grammar too.
Besides, please show us your previous any achievement , Doug. Direct or indirect doesn’t matter. Or some publication if any.
Either these people are incompetent ( a kind interpretation), horribly inexperienced – as Doug says, he’s 33 (the kindest interpretation), or simply an Astroturf polling firm (Occam is getting out his Razor).
In any event, having a house effect in the double digits is a sign of something seriously being wrong with any pollster.
I don’t understand why Real Clear is using a Marketing Firm to skew the data. I just don’t get that.
I’ve been to the Gravis website. My kid can make a better website than that.
I don’t like the smell of it, at all.
There is literally no information about Gravis before today concerning their methodology.
Every article I pull up is dated or updated within the last 24 hours.
How exactly did they get “a seat at the table” with the big boys of polling?
I don’t like this one bit. I mean no disrespect to Mr. Kaplan but the 9/2 polling printout looks like something I did in college business writing.
Its straight out of the book. I really really don’t like this. What I don’t like more is that reputable people are using this freshman polling services.
It smells really fishy to me.
Kaplan’s donation to Clinton was made when she was running against Obama in 2008. I noted it in a prior comment to exemplify Kaplan’s republican leanings, which it does.
“Gravis Marketing…getting you the results you want”
Kaplan is a Republican. I can bear with the bad grammar, but give me a break on the non-partisan BS. Other polling firms (PPP and others) at least fess up to their bias.
The results speak for themselves…outliers.
Props to Kaplan for making an appearance here though and stating his point. He seems genuine in his responses but I still find the polling results suspect.
A good question was asked: How did Gravis get a seat at the big boy table?
Here I am again.
Noting (again) that we don’t have enough data to tell if there is an ex ante Gravis house effect, I have a hypothesis about the possible cause of the possible effect. Gravis conducts polls all in one day (or realclearpolitics made a booboo).
This is unusual. Most pollsters choose phone numbers then call day after day (and usually day after day after day) till they get someone on the line. I know of one other pollster who polls all in one day — Rasmussen.
Rasmussen clearly has a significant house effect. Nate Silver guesses that it is due to the call only once strategy which oversamples people who are home a lot (Rasmussen weights so that party identification fits a 3 month rolling *Rasmussen* average — this removes noise but doesn’t remove bias).
i nevah evah apologise for my grammer or spelling. I do apologize again for speculating about the reason Gravis began political polling. Aside from the fact that we don’t have enough data yet to tell if even a large house effect is statistically significant, I can’t read minds.
Good point on the one day polling. On the last 2 polls And moving forward we will us the multiple day model
Why is this clown and his terrible “polling” service allowed to be 538? It should be dropped.
So making his one Democratic contribution to Hillary Clinton during the time Rush was telling the right wing to boost her campaign versus Obama means he’s unbiased. Lol. It actually seems to point to him not only being a Republican, he’s also someone who may be marching to Rush Limbaugh’s orders. I’d have more respect if he simply stated that he was a Republican running a firm that favors Republicans. A brief check on the net indicates the word is getting out that this is not an unbiased firm. The good news is that most of these outlier pollsters aren’t reported on by the main stream media.
You are the one talking about me Trust me I’m far from a republican operative or taking marching orders from Rush. I do wish the GOP would hire us because this is allot of abuse for putting out polls on my own dime. Regarding the Hilary Clinton donations, the comments are so funny. I donated small amounts of money. $10, , $20 etc. when it got to $250 the Clinton campaign reported it. It was a years worth of donations. If you want to sit in front of your computer and debate me. Enjoy!
Jack Sparrow I imagine it’s easy to insult someone and their business behind your chat handle.
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From Fivethirtyeight at about noon today:
“A better state-level result for Mr. Obama came from an Ohio poll from Gravis Marketing, which put him four points ahead there, reversing a one-point deficit in a poll conducted after the Republican convention. Furthermore, Gravis has had substantial Republican lean in the other polls it has released this year, making these results look stronger for Mr. Obama by comparison.”
Go Gravis!!
In Gallup’s tracking poll released this afternoon, Obama increased his advantage by 1 point: 50 to 44.
There on gravismarketing.blogspot.com. Email me if you can’t find. Doug@gravismarketing.com
Well, I’m glad you’re not Dick Cheney in sheep’s clothing.
Question on the methodology: Is this push-button polling or live q&a? I can’t tell from the report pdf.
Also, you’re self funding these polling activities? What is motivating this fully altruistic act of kindness?
The crosstabs from Ohio show Obama getting 67% of black vot. Hispanic vote only 0.7% of vote and Obama receiving less than 50%. Finally, Obama’s fav rating is -15. None of these numbers are in line with reality. Please explain Mr. Kaplan.
Well I research Polls quite thoroughly and Gravis is a paid Republican pollster. He is there to shift the perception of the race by putting out polls that shift many leaning states to tossups. This is done obviously to give the perception rthat the race is tightening so Republicans have a talking point. Doug, if you are going to deny things you should do a better job of covering up your money trail. LMAO. There are a few Republican endorsed polls now, Rassmussen who isn’t nearly as gregiusly bad as Gravis but is without question backed by a hard core Republican. Purple Strategies is as well.
But PPP is obviously Dem backed. The truly legit (If it can be said there are any) Are SurveyUSA, CNN, Gallup (though Gallup leans right they maintain good credibility.) CBS/NBC/Marist and Quinnipiac polls are all very solid and maintain solid reputations for balanced and unbiased pollings.
As for Doug’s pollings. They seem just completely random in nature. Virginia he has Romney up 5 after the Dem convention when every other poll I saw today had Obama up 3 to 7 points. Could this be to keep Virginia a statistical tie Doug? Also, You put Obama up in Ohio today but somehow as I’ve noticed, you will likely put out a poll in 5 days showing Romney up 5. You poll often and in your frequent pollings have wild swings which usually favor Romney in the long run. I have to wonder, as no other poll in 8 months of polling has shown such tendencies for wild swings, what questions do you ask? Does the Questions change each time? Are they leading? Is it done via live Phone Surveys or telecomputer. Your highly unstable readings sure indicate either poor techniques or a tendency for some nefarious tweakings from survey to survey.
As for getting a seat at the bigboy table. It’s called cash. That simple. If you are willing to pay to get your seat added to the bigboy table, they will happily count you. A donation here and there etc. Money makes the world turn. Right Doug? BTW There are a few places that have already refused to count his site. Huffington I’m told is next. Regardless, Sites like Doug’s with no real validity are simple to ignore. Bottom line, even Rassmussen has Obama leading in all of the swing states by an average of 2 points now. Gallup increased Obama’s lead to 50-43 today. The Job of Purple and Gravis is simply to tighten things up so Republicans can argue the Bounce is over and Romney is still in the race when privately his own Campaign is outraged at Romney for being to gentle.
The odds are though, the Senate falls to the Republicans, likely it will be 51-49. Again obviously this means 4 more years of complete Gridlock. But at least incompetent pollsters like Doug will disappear for 3 years.
This will be my last comment, I have gone above and beyond responding.
This is automated polling, just like PPP and the rest. We do live polling as well, however it is cost prohibitive. Push Polling is a completely different thing, which are not part of our polls.
These are self funded, we believe the we have an non-partisan perspective that is not out there. The truth is, we don’t care who wins, probably an Obama victory would be better for business, because then we will have an open primary in 2016.
In closing, I have enjoyed the debate, some of the comments were over the top, no matter what I say, some will always believe I am partisan. My thought on that is “he who lives in a glass house should not throw stones”
I guess we get no more responses but did anyone ever determine what “likely voter” is to Mr.Kaplan? I also wondered if breakdowns of the voters questioned is listed anywhere. I’ve seen the press releases that say the percentage of vote by age group but have never seen how many were polled per age group. This is also true for other factors such as gender, race, and party. Lastly do they call cellphones or just land lines? All of these things are important for evaluating a poll and yet I can’t find any of them.
– Jim
On thing that disqualifies person is if they said they are not likely to vote. The third option
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“The crosstabs from Ohio show Obama getting 67% of black vot.”
–unknown
================================
This seems impossible since Romney is polling zero percent among African Americans.
Explain Mr. Kaplin.
If Romney is polling zero percent among African Americans, doesn’t the Ohio 67% indicate this polling is nothing but outlier polling?
So Likely voter results aren’t adjusted at all from the tally based upon age or other factors, which actually comes across as more straight then some firms. Which makes me wonder if all the results are unadjusted? If so it could explain the wild fluctuation. On a Saturday you may get more young workers voters versus say a Monday when you would get more retirees and discouraged unemployed folks.
– Jim
… didn’t mean to post with johns fund above, if that post can be removed completely it would be appreciated.
@ Doug Kaplan “On the last 2 polls And moving forward we will us the multiple day model.” Yeah I noticed. Good move.
@ Doug Kaplan — You and your partners each have a donate to Mitt Romney link on your corporate wiki page. Shocker. Your polling firm is widely discredited as being amateur. Congrats on being a zero!
Just as I suspected, another Republican pollster trying to fool the public. Whenever I see a new poll, I google to try and find out who owns it, and what their background is. Nice try Doug Kaplan, but the word is out!
I would completely toss out any polls from Gravis, as they are extremely biased towards the “right”. I will not reveal my name, but as an Independent political consultant, I ca nassure you that most of their polling numbers are 7-10% biased towards the Republicans. For many years, Rasmussen was thought to be in line with the GOP, and there has been evidence to substaniate this truth, but Rasmussen has never been as overtly biased as Gravis. There are polls out there that also slant to the Liberal wing, but none are as biased as the Gravis polling.
DOUG, STOP CORRESPONDING WITH THESE IDIOTS. You make yourself look unprofessional by engaging in a comment section, especially when you write with numerous typos. Not sure a legitimate pollster would feel the need to waste his time in a place like this. That’s for people like me who want to find out about your poll, and now I think I have my answer.
Gravis has a clear GOP bias, especially latest VA poll with Romney up 5% where most others from RealClearPolitics (also GOP leaning site) have Obama up 2 to 7 percent. That’s a 7-13% swing. Can you say.. outlier?
http://www.meetup.com/republican-626/members/14406273/
Would you look at this! The jig is up, Doug!
I recently read the entire results of the Gravis August poll of Pennsylvania preferences for Senate and President. I found the document to be sloppy and amateurish. Worse, I found a glaring mistake in the tabulations. I pointed out the mistake both on the Gravis blog (my comment was deleted by the blog administrator) and via email directly to Doug (still no reply after 12 hours).
Here is the mistake … follow along:
The executive summary of the poll states that 46.76% of respondents support Tom Smith for Senate and that Smith leads Sen. Bob Casey 47% to 24% — a difference of 23 percentage points. A few paragraphs later, the executive summary says that Smith leads Casey by 19 points. The pie chart accompanying the executive summary shows 46.76% for Smith, 28.06% for Casey, and 25.18% undecided.
The news release announcing the poll’s results, meanwhile, refers to Smith receiving 46.76% support. Later, it says “the Polling shows a close race for President and Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey with a decent lead.”
Huh?
A look at the poll’s cross tabs reveals a serious mistake in the calculations. According to the cross tabs, 234 respondents said they would vote for Casey, 195 would vote for Smith, and 70 are undecided. Percentages are:
Casey: 46.89%
Smith: 39.08%
Undecided: 14.03%
Either Gravis fails at basic math, or it is intentionally misstating the poll’s results — I don’t know which is worse.
I see many other problems with the methodology — a poll conducted just one weekday afternoon; way too many respondents over age 50; too many whites; female and minority support for republicans that defies national trends, etc.
But this error is simple math. How could Gravis so seriously misstate the poll’s results? How is it that they have any credibility in any polling work?
I notice that neither Real Clear Politics nor Talking Points Memo include this poll in their polling averages, although Nate Silver has included it in his forecasting (albeit at a low weight).
Bottom line, Gravis is an amateur shop that has no business issuing public polls.
Mr. Kaplan, I know you’re not answering anymore comments. So maybe my question may be too late.
But I noticed on your website that you provide many other services such as “calling centers” “text and email” as well as polling.
To whom are you selling these services??? A legitimate polling organization such as Gallup or Zogby would only stick one product: polling.
Even Republican Rasmussen or Democratic PPP (Public Policy Polling) note that they provide polling services to their prospective parties.
Not making any judgement calls, but your methodology and unorthodox techniques will continue to cast doubt on your claim as a “non-partisan pollster”.
Sam Wang here from the Princeton Election Consortium.
I think that Mr. Kaplan could allay concerns by specifying whether he follows generally accepted principles of polling as described by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), whether he is a member, and where he gets his technical expertise. To my knowledge, reputable pollsters of all stripes, clientwise, do that.
This is an interesting viewpoint, but hardly supportable since the mainstream polls have been oversampling Democrats by an average of around six percent. Nice try, but accounting for that statistical variance from reality would make the article at least somewhat believable.