Are the polls wrong about Kucinich?
Originally published in Utne
Are the polls wrong about Kucinich?
Kucinich moves to second place in innovative candidate website activity ranking
—By Rob Kall, OpEdNews.com
The same internet statistics that predicted within less than one percentage point the percentage Howard Dean won the the Moveon.org internet primary by shows Dennis Kucinich ahead of all the candidates except Howard Dean, who holds a strong lead on Kucinich as well. And in the California Democratic Council (CDC) Vote, Howard Dean took a commanding first place with 56.11 percent of the vote with Dennis Kucinich placing second with 17.19 percent and Wesley Clark with 14.48 percent.
Kucinich is now, with a usual estimate of two percent support in most polls, where Clinton Was in the Months before the Start of the 1991 Primaries. But the congressman's very strong showing in web activity is a very positive sign that suggests pollsters who poll just a few hundred people may be wrong about Kucinich. The Alexa.com stats used in this article that show Dean, then Kucinich in the lead, ahead of the pack, are based on data from hundreds of thousands of internet users. The CDC vote was based on votes from delegates, representing 130 Democratic clubs and county central committees.
David Swanson, Kucinich Campaign press secretary told OpEdnews.com, "There are a number of examples of candidates who were, during these early months, dismissed as fringe, no hope candidates who were low in the early polls, who were either nominated in the primaries or who had a big impact at the convention and in the early primaries. This was completely unexpected by the mainstream media. Those examples include Jerry Brown, Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
When asked what he thought of the mainstream media's suggestions that Al Gore was playing "king maker" with his endorsement of Howard Dean, that it might have clinched the nomination for him, Swanson replied, "The polls that may be most significant, though getting the least attention, are the ones showing that the majority of the voters know nothing about any of the candidates, so it's an open field. There have been a number of polls that put "un-decided" in first or second second place. There are two big problems with the pundits saying that it's wrapped up this early in the race. First, there's no historical background for this. Where people are in the polls does not predict how things will turn out."
"Second, telling people things are already set discourages people from voting and participating in the democratic process. The winner of past elections has been "nobody"-- more people have chosen not to vote than to support anybody. President Bush was elected by 17% of the public.
Here's how the numbers look for the leading candidates:.
Candidate Day Week 3 Months June 25th
Dean 395 290 265.5 255/145
Kucinich 210 125 42 70/51
Kerry 195 100 68 70/90
Clark 140 140 144.5 N/A
Edwards 70 61 36 35/18.5
Gephart 55 35 37 30/15
Lieberman 20 21 17 20/19.5
The stats represent the "reach per million" people on the internet. The June 25th numbers represent the day and week stats the day before the Moveon.org primary.
Going by these statistics, interest in Kucinich has begun strongly ramping up. Clark's numbers remain static.
Why the jump in stats for Kucinich? Claudia Slate, virtual outreach coordinator (a member of the Kucinich internet leadership team) answered, "We're working hard, Dennis is the only one with a plan to fix the economy, and get the troops out of Iraq, and Dennis has a plan for drug reform that does not fill jails with people who have minor drug offenses and he's got a plan to save American jobs, starting with getting rid of NAFTA and the WTO."
The tracking of the presidential primary candidate websites with stats from Alexa.com was invented by this author in the spring of 2003. By December, Alexa.com had begun posting a link to its own profile of candidate websites at the top of its home page. But the alexa.com ranking system uses the less accurate web site rank score. The moveon.org internet primary proved that reach per million was more accurate in predicting the winner. But even with the web site rank score, Dean is still in first and Kucinich is still in second place. Media companies, with often obvious partisan views, favoring Republican candidates, use polls with a few hundred people. It's clear that Alexa.com's massively larger "poll sample" base contradicts the conventional pollsters.
If you want to be able to easily check the website rankings of the different candidates you can click on the names in the chart above. If you want to be able to check any website you visit for its website ranking and other sites that visitors to that site also visit, you can download the alexa.com toolbar. Alexa.com is owned by Amazon and uses the same technology that Amazon uses to tell visitors which books they might be interested in based on other visitor responses. It is the toolbar which sends the message to Alexa.com that a visit was made to a website.
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