vote (Page 5)

A longtime pollster says that media polls are not used touncover the “will” or thoughts of the public, but rather tomanufacture a “public opinion” that grabs the attention ofjournalists and can be used to fill media news holes.

In the 13 years David Moore worked for the Gallup Poll, helearned he learned some things about how polls really work.In the fall of 2007, media pollsters reported a solid leadfor Hillary Clinton among Democratic primary candidates andcrowned Rudy Giuliani the national Republican frontrunner.Clinton’s lead evaporated in the first contest and Giulianilater dropped out of the race without having won a singledelegate.
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OK, we know a lot of the things we do are directed by our genes?but VOTING? And why are polls so often wrong?

According to a new study, the decision to vote is partly genetic. Researchers James H. Fowler, Christopher T. Dawes and Laura A. Baker have identified a link between two specific genes and political participation. They show that individuals with a variant of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have voted in the 2000 presidential election.
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Conventional wisdom says that people become politically more conservative as they age, but sociologists say this isn’t true.

Researchers Nicholas L. Danigelis and Stephen J. Cutler base this new conclusion on data from 25 surveys done between 1972 and 2004 that measured the changes in attitudes that occur within specific groups at different stages in life. The political leanings of over 40,000 Americans were examined with regard to how they felt about the political and economic roles of historically subordinate groups (e.g., women and African-Americans); the civil liberties of groups considered outside the US mainstream (e.g., atheists and homosexuals); and privacy issues (e.g., right-to-die and sex between consenting adults).
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Does negative political advertising really work? Most of us hate those ads, but one political scientist calls them a “multi-vitamin for the democratic process.”

Political scientist Kenneth Goldstein says that attack ads spark voters’ interest and participation. According to Goldstein, “There’s this gut reaction that if a political advertisement is negative, it must have a deleterious affect on American politics. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the more that people are exposed to negative advertising, the more they know, the more engaged they are and the more likely they are to vote.”
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