Filed under: Politics, Polls — marc moore on September 13, 2007 @ 5:25 am CEST
Unity08, an attempt to influence the presidential nominating process on-line, has published a new set of results. A few of the slides caught my interest. First, the slide that ranks the presidential candidates (at the time):
Unity voters are nonplussed by the field, that’s for sure. Obama garnered a distinct preference, which leads me to believe that Unity’s participants are those who lean toward “outsiders”.
Yet the slide ranking the importance of various issues contradicts that notion:
Given this I see no reason for Obama to rank at the top of the previous list. The opposite, if anything.
I’ve seen a lot of interest in Unity on the web but I found it interesting that their survey drew about 20,000 participants. Not an insignificant number but hardly an-on-line revolution.
Another interesting slide is the participant demographic slide.
Older, wealthier, better educated, and more male than average. On the whole, it seems to me that Unity08 is not a particularly interesting movement in regard to the larger population or the election process as a whole.
I’m disappointed on all counts, personally. I’d hoped for more.
Cross-posted at Black Shards.
Update: amended number of participants per Bob Roth of Unity08 marketing. This number was missing from the survey results, unfortunately.
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1 Black Shards, In Your Eyes, Blinding » Unity08 Candidate Rankings
September 13, 2007 @ 5:26 am CEST[…] Cross-posted at The Van Der Galien Gazette. […]
2 Interested
September 13, 2007 @ 6:19 am CESTonly 37% thought it important that the person was able to be bi-partisan?
Isn’t that what the entire bit of Unity08 was about?
3 Michael van der Galiën
September 13, 2007 @ 11:04 am CESTMarc me too. This is… very disappointing. If this is it, it won’t go anywhere.
4 Tom
September 13, 2007 @ 12:04 pm CESTIf I remember correctly, Unity08 didn’t attract much interest here either.
5 Tully
September 13, 2007 @ 2:50 pm CESTI thought the respondent demographics were the most interesting part. The median Unity ‘08 respondent was a middle-aged male with a college degree, in a middle-level professional job.
IOW, roughly the same disaffected populist/libertarian demographic that drove the Perot campaign in ‘92.
6 Bob Roth
September 13, 2007 @ 3:45 pm CESTThe study was completed by more than 20,000 members, but we only reported a sampling of those results ~3000.
Bob Roth
VP Online Marketing
Unity08
7 Tully
September 13, 2007 @ 4:38 pm CESTThe study was completed by more than 20,000 members, but we only reported a sampling of those results ~3000.
Why?
8 marc
September 13, 2007 @ 4:50 pm CESTGood question. I can understand culling away the outliers but that much massaging seems invalid.
As one of the people who completed the survey I’d prefer to know that my vote counted.
I’d also prefer to have an unfiltered view of the other views represented by Unity participants in order to determine the reliability of the people I’m associating with.
9 Bob Roth
September 13, 2007 @ 6:04 pm CESTFor load reasons. The more secure version was very server load intensive, while the less secure version could handle a large number of requests. In order to get the invitations sent in a timely manner to all the members, we split them between the secure and non-secure versions. The study itself was exactly the same. The highly secure version locked a member’s study so that it could not be accessed again. The less secure version could be accessed again, but we only recorded the first completion of the study.
The sampling was random across the secure versions of the study.
Remember, we are pushing the limits of existing technologies while also building things that will be entirely new. This is only the first vote and we’ve already done a lot of work behind the scenes to increase our ability to accept more connections in secure mode for the next version.
10 Simon
September 13, 2007 @ 7:02 pm CESTGiven that the survey’s methodology was seriously flawed, it’s hardly surprising that the results are seriously dubious.
With regard to slide 29, I suppose my vote is counted towards the 0% of respondents who selected the option I did. So as it turns out, 0% ≠ 0%.
11 Interested
September 13, 2007 @ 7:09 pm CESTexisting technologies is far different from available technologies.
12 Michael van der Galiën
September 13, 2007 @ 8:16 pm CESTBob, it’s good to hear from you again.
13 Bob Roth
September 13, 2007 @ 8:26 pm CESTThank you, Michael. You would not believe how busy we are… we’re trying hard to keep overhead low, yet still build the tools and provide the support that our members expect. Not sleeping a whole lot around here. In fact, right now I am holed up in a Starbucks on the west coast refueling and trying to get caught up on email. Lovin’ it, though.
14 Tully
September 17, 2007 @ 2:18 am CESTBob,
Query: Did you report only the more secure version? And did you report the results of it in entirety? That point is left unclear in your response.
15 Bob Roth
September 17, 2007 @ 8:04 pm CESTWe only reported a sampling of the more secure versions. The entire results are not yet available. It is a massive amount of data and some of the questions differed between studies (none of the varied questions were reported, they were mostly specific to Unity08 itself).
16 Michael van der Galiën
September 17, 2007 @ 8:19 pm CESTYeah, I’ll soon found out what it’s like to lead a major effort
The offer for a guest post still stands