road trip

The PA Youth Vote team took a road trip this past weekend.  We drove to State College, which is – wait for it – the home of the largest state university, Penn State.  They are not very imaginative with their city names here.  (In Pennsylvania’s defense, I also saw road signs for a town named Desire, which given it’s location, I’m guessing is the result of excess creativity). The road trip did not start off particularly well, as we got on the road late, got stuck in Friday afternoon traffic, and then missed our exit by about 40 miles, and ended up taking five and a half hours for a three and a half hour drive (we made it back today in three).  Overall I’d say the weekend was a success though.

It was about fifteen degrees colder there than in Philadelphia, so it really felt like fall, verging into winter.  It was Homecoming weekend, and on Saturday the streets were full of college students and families in blue and white sweatshirts and hats and mittens.  We mostly hung out in the local Obama office, in the student room, where we we got to know some very dedicated volunteers.  I’m talking college students who pretty much lived at the office, including late Friday night and early Saturday morning.

I took Saturday night and Sunday morning off to visit an old high school friend of mine who lives about an hour away from State College.  Small town Pennsylvania is beautiful this time of year, so I have to admit I would not want to live out there (she doesn’t really either).  It was a really nice visit; she’s one of those friends that no matter how long it has been (two years in this case) there’s no awkwardness or introductory period, we always fall right back into sync.

Now I have a cold and am battling a sinus headache to try to write something of interest, since I have been rather lax at updating this blog recently (even without the weekend trip I’ve been very busy, staying later at work as the election approaches).

Right now we are struggling to keep up the intensity of volunteer (and staff) efforts, given that the polls all show Obama with a solid lead in Pennsylvania.  I’m glad of that, but also terrified.  I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I’m afraid it will drop on our heads.  But it’s very alluring to relax, to get excited, to count the chickens, etc.

Speaking of chickens.  We stayed with a retired professor and his wife on their little farm near the university.  They had chickens in their front yard, and a bee hive.  Upstairs, where we stayed, there was a deep bath tub and large windows without curtains.  From the bath I looked outside at the bright frosty morning, and a horse wandered by, and I thought: what a lovely place to be right now.  But I am glad to be back in the city too, and not to see my breath when I walk outside.

polling

As I sit here writing this, my co-worker is sitting beside me clicking through a link to an online poll about Sarah Palin’s experience.  You can vote as many times as you want in this poll, so she clicks the link, votes, closes the window, and clicks the link again.  She wants to see the 48% of people who think Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president click up to 49%.

Yesterday a friend sent this poll out to a group of people, and being argumentative sorts, we commenced to have a discussion of whether the time spent voting in this poll is worth it.  As some of my friends pointed out, it could be better spent calling voters or doing other work for the campaign.  After all, a poll that lets anyone vote as many times as they want is an entirely useless poll.  The sample is completely self-selected, which means it is no way represents a slice of anything.  This poll tells us nothing, except that so far it has been forwarded to more conservatives than liberals, or at least, conservatives have been more diligent about clicking through and voting.

It occurred to me that this is a perfect example of the weird role polls play in our political system.  This poll tells us nothing about public opinion.  But it feels wrong to let it stand with the current results.  It holds some bizarre moral authority, because people have voted.  Most polls that are presented on TV or in the newspaper have better methodological grounding than this one; but most of them are a lot less accurate than is popularly believed.  Polls can be manipulated very easily by slight changes in wording or presentation.  Sample sizes, and therefore accuracy, varies widely.  People often mislead pollsters,  intentionally or not.  But the news media needs something to talk about every day, all day, so every poll is greeted with excitement or terror, as if it’s gospel truth.

Forget the polls.  None of them really says anything.  Go volunteer!  Make a few calls from home, if that’s all you have time for.  Go to a swing state for the weekend.  Donate money.  Ignore everything said on TV.  Don’t sit there, clicking the poll over and over again.  Do something.

(In my coworker’s defense, she only did this five or ten times, and by now she has moved on to real, very important, campaign work.)

EDIT: Apparently this has been quite a controversial/infamous poll, and NOW (which posted it) has an article up discussing online polling.