Remember, remember, the 5th of November!

Ron Paul stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

 

Who cares if doctors tell the truth or not. Nobody thinks about doctors telling stories. People look at politicians for what they say, and the same people will always think: " All liars anyway..."

 

It doesn't matter how much money RP raises. He still has to crawl out of the bottom 5% of the polls.

 

He wins online polls, text polls, straw polls; the only polls he doesn't win are the MSM phone polls, which I've explained many many times before. In short, the polls target the small majority of Republicans who have showed up for the last 3 primary elections and voted Republican, and who own a listed, landline telephone number. This kind of formula does not reflect well on a candidate who has a much younger (cell phones), libertarian (unlisted numbers/privacy advocates) base. Also, it doesn't reflect the huge amount of supporters who are changing parties because this is the kind of old-school Republican they can support, not the faux Republicans of the post-Reagan years.

Also, keep in mind that these phone polls are a catch-22; he's not gaining much support, but on many of the polls, he's listed in a second menu and not as a first choice, if the particular poll even lists him as a choice at all. Hard to gain support when the damn media won't include you in their poll, no?

 

So then Bush's poll numbers could really be much higher than what the MSM gives him credit for?

Online polls can easily be spammed and have been. This has been observed time and again, despite the claim that they cannot because of IP address. Proxies are a dime a dozen and this would assume every poll has IP checking, which it doesn't.

Straw polls are meaningless. I saw some of those straw polls, where a few dozen would show up to vote. I believe some were actually created and held by rp supporters.

The media does including him in polls. That's the very reason why he's holding 2-5% at best, when reported. Nothing catch-22 about that. He's registering *some* support by extremists, but no where near the kind of support that Thompson, Romney and Guiliani have.

Still, I do believe RP has moved from a third tier candidate to a second tier candidate.

 

Well, I suppose Bush's numbers could also be off, if there were similar circumstances. Keep in mind that the whole intention of the way the media conducts phone polls is so they are scientifically accurate. While in the past this probably held truth, I believe Ron Paul is an anomaly in the system, and the polls simple don't factor in candidates such as him.

Assumptions are being made by the way the polls are conducted.

• For one, by polling only listed landline telephones, pollsters are making an assumption that this method of communication and random sampling will be fair to all candidates i.e. no candidate will have significantly more or less supporters reached by that method than another candidate. Thirty years ago, this was probably true. Nowadays, candidates who gain support from a younger base are at a disadvantage, because in general younger generations are more commonly dropping landline telephones and using cellular telephones only.
  
• Also, I think it's fair to say that more libertarian-leaning citizens are likely to unlist their telephone number, as these people so commonly are the advocates of privacy rights.
  
• The polls assume that a good representation of the people who will vote in this primary are people who have voted in past primaries, particularly, the last three (for most polls). The idea being that across election years, the most motivated political activists will be the majority of people voting in the primaries (traditionally, primaries get about 10% of the voters as the general election). The problem here is that one of the biggest pushes with the Ron Paul campaign is getting people out to the primaries, and many of the people involved are not previous primary voters. To speak on a personal level, my brother, mother, three best friends and myself have all never voted in a primary election for ANY candidate, and now we are all voting in the primary for Ron Paul.
  
• Kind of in tandem with my previous point, the pollsters assume that the majority of primary voters will be people who voted for that particular political party in the past three primaries. The people who support Ron Paul are from a very diverse political spectrum. He gets the traditional Republican voters, but he also has people from the Democratic party voting, first time voters, Libertarians, Constitution Party voters, and people who had no party affiliation. Unlike most other candidates who have a small minority of their total supporters falling into other political parties, with Ron Paul, a vast number of people are coming from all ends to rally behind him. These people are registering Republican, and they like the Reaganesque style of Republicanism and true limited government and lower taxes. The polls simply don't account for a candidate who draws such wide support from other political parties, and it skews the results as those supporters will never be included in a primary poll.

I realize straw polls are not perfect, nor online polls, nor text polls (although of the three, that is probably the best method). But the assumptions made by phone polls, which in previous years were scientifically viable assumptions, are no longer valid, and particularly with a candidate like Ron Paul. If someone who's fairly versed in statistics would like to rationalize and rebuke my points, go ahead; but I doubt you'll be able to.

 

I still think RP will run as an Independent or Libertarian (even though I think he said he would not) and be the Perot-type spoiler that will hand the election to Hillary.

 

Thanks, for your valuable effort.

~~~~~

Over $4.2 Million was donated to Dr. Ron Paul in one single day!

• The massive support for his message of freedom is very real.

 

Gtech needs to watch this http://www.thisnovember5th.com/ from start to finish. Put your ideals aside and simply watch that video, RP is a decent man a man of conviction and nobility.

 

Unless the GOP gives Ron the nod, Hillary will be your next president.

RP is the only one who can beat her.

 

This. As I've said to the most hardcore RP haters, you can either vote him in, or go with Hillary. Either way, Ron will be a factor in this race.

 

Very true. I've never seen a candidate with such diversity of support from Dems, young, old, Repubs, etc etc.

The Dems will win by default if RP doesn't. If I were a Republican I would be be going nuts over this guy as great alternative to Hillary.

Obviously they don't get it which is why we are in this conundrum currently.

 

Thanks for the replies to my post, definitely interesting about the straw polls.

 

Reading is fundamental. $12 million by Dec 31. We'll eclipse that easily.

The Mission Accomplished was setting the single biggest fundraising day this election cycle, based on numbers put out this morning, even superseding Hillary, Obama and Romney. And it also set a new online record for single day fundraising.

But the cool part is, 50% of the donors were new, and the campaign briefed us tonight that only 1.9% of donors are maxed out, meaning that we could probably do this 2 or 3 more times, and those plans are already being laid by the grassroots for money bombs in December and beyond.

 

Politico.com: Ron Paul gets relevant in a hurry



"I think there is a tremendous hunger in America for a politician that is real, truthful and more interested in principle than in having the job,” Paul said in explaining the phenomenon."