Poll Rigging?

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nzbnw

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#27113 14-Oct-2008 23:09

Well it seems someone or perhaps a group of people have taken offence that Stuff.co.nz poll (non scientific) was showing early in the day 58-60% of respondents felt that “It's a cynical bribe” in response to the question “What do you think of Labour's universal student allowance pledge?”

Currently, and amazingly in a short space of time this now reads 58% and climbing think it’s a wise and much-needed policy.

Interesting considering this was the third (out of three) preferred response during the course of the day.

View the poll here.

I wonder how often people go to these extremes for no real gain?

Shame on them!

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allan

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#171184 14-Oct-2008 23:30

Strange, that's not the page I get to see. When I click on view results from the Stuff main page I go to
http://www.stuff.co.nz/view-poll-results.html?section_id=10&poll_id=18397 which shows "It's a wise and much needed policy" at only 15.1%.

Your link goes to http://www.stuff.co.nz/view-poll-results.html?section_id=28435&poll_id=18396. What gives here?

ajobbins

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#171185 14-Oct-2008 23:50

I noticed exactly the same thing and wondered.

Over on decision08.co.nz (TV3 run) Labour are getting thrashed in just about every one of the specific polls they have.

I guess you get that with unmoderated opinion polls online. The proper ones are always going to be more accurate as they have processes to ensure the data is a good representation.

Sparky221

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#171188 15-Oct-2008 00:00

They have two seperate polls asking the same questions. One shows up on the home page, the other when you are looking at a poltical story. Not sure if it is intentional..

nzbnw

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#171191 15-Oct-2008 00:04

So they do...

Mmm....

nzbnw

freitasm

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#171215 15-Oct-2008 08:38

Sparky221: They have two seperate polls asking the same questions. One shows up on the home page, the other when you are looking at a poltical story. Not sure if it is intentional..

How dumb is that?

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BartManGeek

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#171220 15-Oct-2008 09:06

freitasm:
How dumb is that?

meh it's stuff.co.nz you get used to it...

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kiwitrc

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#171270 15-Oct-2008 13:20

I wrote an email to my local Labour MP to congratulate them on something they did a long time ago(unusual for me). Then for a while until I asked to be removed, I got emails urging supporters to vote for certain things on the stuff polls. So I guess they just do an email blast to rally the comrades!!

nate

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#171279 15-Oct-2008 13:50

Before I start, I'm not condoning this action at all...

As a programmer, it's not hard for me to see someone writing a script that would skew the results of any online poll. You would need to establish what fraud steps Stuff have to prevent invalid votes, take this into account, and then using multiple proxies at different time intervals to get the poll to show what you want it to.

The real question is would someone go to the effort to do this?

ajobbins

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#171286 15-Oct-2008 14:21

nate: The real question is would someone go to the effort to do this?

I think it is pretty clear someone has. The smalled poll with the same questions on stuff shows the complete opposite result, as does the poll on decision08.co.nz which shows 88% agree with the statement "Labour are trying to buy this election"

Another stuff poll also has the majority saying Helen Clark was the winner of the leaders debate last night; the complete opposite of the panels opinion as well as the text or phone in poll that showed John Key winning 2 votes to 1. The phone in/text poll would be much harder to manipulate, especially at 99c a Pop.

allan

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#171298 15-Oct-2008 15:31

It would appear that both sides are playing this game. I just went to look at the Stuff "Who won last night's leader's debate" poll and in the space of about four minutes and a number of screen refreshes the "John Key" numbers increased from 4965 to 5069 and counting, while the "Helen Clark" numbers increased from 4101 to a much more modest 4122.

This has now completely reversed the previous result.

nate

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#171342 15-Oct-2008 19:42

adamj: The phone in/text poll would be much harder to manipulate, especially at 99c a Pop.

Not really too tricky - with someone's compromised VoIP account and/or a stolen mobile you could do it.

Checking a box then pressing Submit, I agree, is much, much easier.