2/7/2012 Program: Bill Williams spoke on "The Election, the Media, Polling, & MONEY"

Bill Williams spoke on “The Election, the Media, Polling, & MONEY” at Kiwanis. Bill last made a presentation to Chatham Kiwanis at the William Pitt restaurant over 35 years ago. He thought another good title for this program would be “A modern American Industry”, because that is what our elections are turning into.

Bill  is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the City University of New York – Hunter College.  In the above photo he is shown with his wife Marion at the Chatham-Madison Kiwanis 2/7/2012 luncheon meeting.

Bill started by reminding the audience of the dramatic errors made by past political polls, e.g. the NY Times headlining Gov. Dewey winning the 1948 presidential election. Polling companies began about 1920 and there were no major errors made until about 1936, when Langdon was expected to beat Roosevelt.  At that time, there were only three or four polling companies and methods were not yet perfected – data collection was a new idea. Today, there are hundreds of polling companies in business, academia and media-politics. Some are legit, others are questionable. Bill described how “numerical propaganda” leads people to act on worthless data. He also explained the difference between precision and accuracy.

In Bill’s early career, he worked on pre-data. It is important to carefully plan how data is collected. Outcome of statistical analysis is influenced by how the data is gathered in the first place.

In the world of politics, a lot of candidates have entered the 2012 presidential contest. There is a lot of money available through the Super Political Action Committees. Media (TV) follows campaign events and encourages polling so results will motivate candidates to spend more on advertisements. Candidates advertise and encourage polling to get name recognition (and candidates encourage polling methods that favor themselves).

The Republican primary campaign has had sharp swings as news (including polls) is covered by the media and candidates respond with ads. The Democrats are sticking with President Obama, who presently has a low approval rating. He is also thought to have an enormous (Billion Dollar) SuperPAC war chest. Republicans have much less money.

Media attention seems to focus on issues like Newt’s wives, Bain Capital and President Obama’s singing. Meanwhile, people are donating millions of dollars to election campaigns. Why?

The audience applauded Bill’s entertaining and thought-provoking presentation. Click here for more information.