2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumYes, I'm taking credit for this. Fraudulent pollster Overtime Politics is no longer a hosted site
And has returned to bihira.com.
Absolutely no one is going to convince me that my expose on this asshole wasn't the catalyst for this complete dismantling of web presence.
Damn, does it feel good to see outfits like this disappear.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)Agschmid
(28,749 posts)sufrommich
(22,871 posts)DCBob
(24,689 posts)Some on this site used them repeatedly to show polling beneficial to Bernie.
FSogol
(45,355 posts)riversedge
(69,711 posts)Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)There was a discussion among editors about whether this outfit's polls should be included. I cited and linked to your analysis in arguing against it, and that opinion prevailed. The reports of Overtime Politics polls results were removed from Wikipedia a few months ago.
I appreciate the update. It's unlikely that anyone on Wikipedia will try to resurrect this issue, but if happens, I'll point out your latest finding.
Godhumor
(6,437 posts)I remember following your wiki conversations. Glad the sane prevailed.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)grossproffit
(5,591 posts)ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)Godhumor
(6,437 posts)Basically a website called Overtime started up last quarter of last year and began posting polls from three or four states each week. These polls inevitably showed Bernie outperforming wildest dreams but we're quickly embraced by certain areas of the internet. The problems were that he only polled states other people weren't polling, so there would be no comparisons for validity, and he claimed to ask only a single question ("who are you voting for?" and tallying results.
As he earned more followers, he did an AMA and even had Pollster contact him about adding his polls into aggregation (They declined after realizing he had no controls or demographics).
I had my suspicions about the validity of his polls right from the start, but, early in 2016, he decided to add demographic data to his results to try and get into aggregation (and get bigger). The problem was that once he released demographic info, I could get in and assess the kind of work he was doing. However, what I found was that he just made up numbers and wasn't actually polling.
My post on it went through various channels, eventually got back to him, and he started trying to defend himself on his site. That did not go particularly well.
He faded out completely around the Michigan Primary and the site's hosting just went defunct.
Good times.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)More of this!