Indablog

Overall, the response by the candidates to the 10Questions experiment was shameful. Only Mike Huckabee, to his everlasting credit, responded right away. Beyond that, only Edwards, Gravel, and Obama (via clips form campaign questions) answered by the deadline. No others responded, despite 3 reminders (!) (count \’em… 3!) on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times! If that\’s cash advance payday loan softwarecash until payday loanbank of america cash advance,cash advance america,advance america cash companyadvance cash loan payday softwareadvance cash loan onlineadvance cash fax machine no required,no fax cash advance,advance cash fax no quickcash till payday loan,world wide cash payday loan,cash loan paydayadvance cash cash loan loan payday quick,advance cash loan payday today,advance cash loan paydaycash loan payday tilfirst cash advance,first time cash advance,first choice cash advancepay day cash advance payday loan,pay day loan cash advancecash in advance loan,advance application cash loan,cash advance houston loanallied cash advancefirst american cash advancecash advance servicefast cash payday loan,payday us fast cash loanadvance america cash advance,advance america cash,advance america cash firstcash loan payday tilldownload casino gameblack jack betting strategyfree online video pokervideo poker for winnersblack jack gamblinggame casino online slots,online casino slots,best casino slots onlinevideo poker machinefree download slotsfree triple play video pokeronline slots,free online casino slots,wheel of fortune slots onlineonline video poker gamesplay black jack online freeplay casino roulette,casino roulette,roulette casino gameblack jack learn play,play black jack,black jack play tournamentvideo poker doubleplay free video pokeronline baccaratfree bingofree backgammon,backgammon download free online play,play backgammon online freevideo poker practiceonline casino promotionplay free rouletteonline casino roulette,casino game online roulettevideo poker gamebaccarat online gamblingplay casino onlineonline casino free moneytournament backgammonfree casino game no downloadtriple play video pokerjacks or better video pokerfree slots and video poker not a slap in the face to one of the noblest experiments yet tried in American democracy, I don\’t know what is.\n\nSo be it. If 10Questions didn\’t catch on, with all the resources they had, then the near silence that greeted the Indaba/ChoiceRanker experiment is that much easier to understand.\n\nI still think that 10QuestionsIl video casino in linea è molto popolare anche nei casino online. was on the right track. I\’ll reserve my critique for another blog entry. For now, this one will serve as a link for ballots that I \’m creating which will allow voters to rank the various 10Questions answers.\n\nFor any one interested who reads this… If you want to respond, you\’ll need to create a distinct user_ID here, even if you\’ve already got one at ChoiceRanker.com. The sites may look pretty much the same, but they\’re not completely integrated.\n

No Comments »
Filed under: Development Chronicles, Instant Runoff Voting, Indaba Polls, Musings

This week’s turnout set a new record. A wave of Ron Paul supporters showed up only minutes after the poll opened, well before I had released any announcements. There was another surge of voting after I posted a “polls are open” diary on on RedState. RedState’s owners would probably be very reluctant to admit it, but their site refers more supporters for Ron Paul than for anyone else.

The Republican poll also saw a relatively healthy turnout for Mike Huckabee. His 44 votes may seem small in light of the Ron Paul swarm, but it was by far the strongest showing for a Republican other than Paul since the Tuesday Tracker series began. Only John Edwards has done better on the Democratic side.

Democratic turnout was boosted by activity surrounding the debate held in Philadelphia that evening. Early balloting had Chris Dodd in front, but Edwards advanced steadily throughout the day, taking the lead and then improving his margin. A few referrals from a pro-Edwards website pushed him just past the 50% margin in the first round of voting, precluding the need for a runoff on the Democratic side. Barack Obama kept advancing as well, finally squeezing by Dodd in the plurality vote, but not depth, replicating last week’s finish.

This was the first time without a runoff on the Democratic side. So, the bottom line is that, on ChoiceRanker’s biggest day ever, there was no opportunity to showcase the virtues of its instant runoff display technology.

The results in the tables below have been reorganized to provide a more sensible indication of relative depth. The tables now include candidates who received no 1st place votes.

Once again, Tom Tancredo was the most popular 2nd choice for Paul voters, followed by Alan Keyes. Duncan Hunter was the most popular 2nd choice for Huckabee voters.

DEM poll details are here

GOP poll details are here

No Comments »
Filed under: Indaba Polls

Dodd’s advance to 2nd place in depth in the DEM Tuesday Tracker echoes the results of the most recent DailyKos frontpage poll. GOP participation has fallen off drastically, probably because RedState, where the poll is announced, has tied itself into knots over the prominence of Ron Paul supporters there, and an admin wiped out the TT announcement during a general sweep against pro-Paul diaries. Someone later acknowledged that it was a mistake, but it’s questionable whether RS is worth any more effort.

DEM details

GOP Details

No Comments »
Filed under: Indaba Polls

The Democratic poll details are here.

The Republican poll details are here

Note that Thompson and McCai aren’t on the list because they received no 1st place votes.

No Comments »
Filed under: Indaba Polls

This week’s Tracker produced largest turnout so far, probably because the Republican debate in Michigan kept Ron Paul supporters on a high level of alert throughout the evening. Paul voters crushed their opposition, most of whom have made barely any effort to show up for the last couple of weeks.

The turnout on the DEM side was fairly typical, producing another win for John Edwards. But the heavy turnout of Paul supporters makes it possible to say something useful about that community.

For starters (and consistent with previous results), just over 32 percent (144 of 448) of Paul voters offered no second choice, indicating that an exceptionally high proportion of them are not likely to be “team players” within the GOP.

Furthermore, (and also consistent with recent results), among the Paul voters who did cast a 2nd choice, 132 favored Tom Tancredo, 65 favored Mike Huckabee, and 20 favored Alan Keyes. Giuliani was their least favored option by far.

It’s noteworthy that Tancredo received no 1st place votes at all in this poll, but took 2nd place in the election’s Depth score solely because of help from Paul supporters. As I wrote previously, Ron Paul has coat tails.

(Tancredo doesn’t appear in the chart at the bottom of the page because my initial design included only candidates who received at least one 1st place vote. I’ll find a way to offer better consistency between the analysis presented here and the graphics presented on the election page as I propagate the new adjusted Depth calculation into the realtime results.)

Finally, 37 Paul voters also participated in the Presidential Priorities poll, offering the 1st rank choices listed in the following table (keeping in mind, that with greater levels of participation, it would be preferable to present the results as a funciton of Depth).

I’ve added “Sound Money” as an option in the priority poll since Paul has been mentioning it often during his speeches and debate performances.

Herer a re summary results for each poll. Full details are available at the associated link.

Democrats

Republicans

No Comments »
Filed under: Development Chronicles, Indaba Polls

I sent out email announcements for the Tuesday Tracker for the last couple of weeks, prompting many participants to return. But the response from DailyKos has dropped off, and the usual Ron Paul swarms haven’t been materializing. This week, instead of posting diaries across the political blogosphere right at noon, I’ll try late afternoon or early evening.

I’m not doing much actual development these days. I’ve been putting time into promoting the site, getting some political writing off my chest (here and here), spending a long weekend at a friend’s wedding in West Virginia, and even doing some real-world work.

There has been one small behind the scenes advance, however… I’ve created a better metric to express Depth. For now it’s only available in the sproc I use to generate these results, but it will eventually support graphing of depth score changes over time. The new score divides each candidate’s current version of the depth score by the sum of all the depth scores in that poll. Since the adjusted scores will always sum up to 1, it will be easier to track changes week by week.

Once again, the Democrats run Edwards/Obama/Kucinich. It was a Ron Paul week for the Republicans.

Democrats

Republicans

No Comments »
Filed under: Development Chronicles, Indaba Polls

Results remain fairly consistent with previous polls. Once again, John Edwards took the Democratic poll in every dimension. A relatively low turnout in the Republican poll permitted a 10th round IRV victory for Fred Thompson. Ron Paul started out leading with 1st rank votes, and also took the lead in overall depth. Round after round, however, supporters of defeated candidates refused almost unanimously to transfer their votes to Paul, giving the victory to Thompson. This election showcases the impact of the IRV system. (Also, my depth calculation uses a modified Condorcet that emphasizes the impact of 1st rank votes. Thompson probably would have led in depth under a traditional Condorcet algorithm.)

There was a significant attempt at ballot stuffing this week. The same IP address was connected with nearly sixty ballots over a short period of time, indicating use of a technical ploy. Nearly all of those ballots favored Dennis Kucinich on the Democratic side and Paul on the Republican side. I disqualified the ballots, and contacted an individual at an email address associated with one of the ballots, inviting that person to provide credible evidence that the votes were acutally submitted by distinct individuals. I’ll requalify the ballots if that evidence comes through.

There was also an incessent but wildly ineffective attempt at ballot stuffing by a couple of Mitt Romney supporters who never figured out that the system was simply updating their official ballot.

Democratic Candidates Poll

Republican Candidates Poll

No Comments »
Filed under: Indaba Polls

The weekly online poll by Pajamas Media was recently reconfigured to exclude most of the candidates. It now allows votes for only the top 4 Democrats and top 5 Republicans, based on reporting from the poll aggregator, Real Clear Politics. That’s unfair, in my view, and it could also be risky in such a crowded field, with several months to go. PM folks (who clearly seem to lean toward Thompson) say they’re trying to block swarm voters. So, once again, they’ve blocked out Ron Paul. But another champion swarmer, Bill Richardson still has the lead on the Democratic side, and Chris Dodd, who’s been rising with a bullet, can’t be seen. Pajama’s Media has undercut its chances to show significant trends that might bubble out of the second tier.

Once again, the problem isn’t swarms, but lack of interest in participation. This is the Internet. Viral behaviors are a Good Thing. In any case, IRV voting is far better at dealing with crowded fields than plurality voting.

Last week’s polls saw the smallest turnout since the Tuesday Tracker began, and therefore won’t receive much discussion.

The Democratic Poll

The Republican Poll

Also, I changed the title of the series for ease of use.

No Comments »
Filed under: Indaba Polls, Polling News

Once again, John Edwards prevailed in every dimension of the Tuesday Tracker poll for the Democratic candidates, held September 11, 2007. That week’s Democratic poll saw a large jump in turnout over previous weeks (though at 147 votes, it’s still pretty small). Ron Paul took the Republican poll in another dominant showing.

Edwards was stronger than ever. For most of the day he was sitting on a first round victory, but there was enough diversity of a turnout toward the end to force a brief runoff.

Only 3 (4%) of the 70 participants who gave Edwards their 1st rank voted indicated no 2nd choice. Dennis Kucinich followed with 32 1st rank votes in the DEM poll, with 7 (22%) of those supporters providing no 2nd rank choice. In the GOP poll, by comparison, Ron Paul received 73 1st rank votes, of which 28 (38%) offered no 2nd rank vote.

Relative willingness to grant 2nd and lower rank choices to other candidates in the same party can be taken as a measure of how readily a candidate’s supporters will participate in coalition building as a crowded field narrows, or during a brokered convention.

Though Kucinich took the 2nd highest number of 1st rank votes among the Dems, Barack Obama collected far more 2nd and 3rd rank choices, and thus beat Kucinich in the dimenson that measures depth of support. That behavior is one of the virtues of the ranked choice/instant runoff format. It’s also been displayed at the monthly poll here, where a 1st round lead by Gravel supporters was eventually overcome by Edwards as the consenus alternative.

Wesley Clark got a huge bump in the September Buzz poll (which includes popular but unannounced candidates) just before he endorsed Hillary Clinton. At the time of this writing, he’s still beating Al Gore. Who did Clark’s supporters prefer as their next choice? Out of 43 votes, 26% offered no 2nd rank choice at all. Gore picks up the lion’s share of the rest, followed by Biden and Obama. Edwards is back in the pack, and only one would have supported Clinton.

Only 16 Tuesday Tracker participants also voted in the Presidential Priorities poll. Edwards voters tended to rank the war in Iraq as their top priority, while Kucinich voters emphasized health care.

GOP Results

Read more…

No Comments »
Filed under: Indaba Polls

As usual, John Edwards has prevailed in every dimension of the Tuesday Tracker poll for the Democratic candidates, reflecting a voting population drawn primarily from readers of DailyKos and myDD. Fred Thompson and Ron Paul split victories over the previous two weeks. Thompson’s strength reflects the preferences of voters attracted by the announcement links on RedState. Ron Paul dominates whenever one of his supporters provides a link within a campaign forum site.

The strength of support for Ron Paul was signiificant enough in the last pol to reveal political coattails. Though Tom Tancredo received only 5 1st place votes, he received so many 2nd place votes among Paul supporters that his depth score exceeded Fred Thompson’s, who received nearly triple the number of 1st place votes.

Here are the detailed results for the previous two sets of Tuesday Tracker polls:

Democrats, August 28, 2007

Democrats, September 4, 2007

Republicans, August 28, 2007

Republicans, September 4, 2007

No Comments »
Filed under: Indaba Polls