The Truth Behind the NOW on PBS "Palin Poll"

You may have seen or been forwarded an email pleading with you to visit the NOW on PBS website to vote on what we now call the "Palin Poll." This poll question, asking if Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President, was launched during the Republican Convention, and was replaced the next week, as we do with all of our weekly poll questions.

As with all web polls, this one was unscientific -- created to measure enthusiasm, inspire dialogue and debate, and to draw attention to our more comprehensive content: video investigations, interactive debates, interviews, maps & charts, essays, etc. Given this, we did not at first restrict the number of votes a user could make.

Sometimes, creating web content is like tossing lit matches at a gasoline station. Some fizzle in puddles, and others find their way to a pool of gasoline. This poll reached the attention of many bloggers and passionate political communities on the left and on the right. The poll, which normally saw thousands of votes, suddenly received tens of millions of votes. Site traffic on the whole increased exponentially, and we saw spam-like emails pleading for "Yes" and "No" votes from as far away as France and Belgium, and as close as our friends, doctors, and colleagues. The poll quickly became the #1 most popular web page on all of PBS, bringing with it four other NOW on PBS web pages to complete the top five.

In response to the attention, including some complaints about the poll methodology and the appropriateness of the question itself, a cookie registration system was set in place, and John Siceloff, Executive Producer of NOW on PBS, wrote this public letter to share with our NOW on PBS audience, both old and new, as an effort to make our means and motives transparent:

From NOW on PBS Executive Producer John Siceloff

I am writing in reference to the now famous "Palin poll" that appeared on the NOW on PBS homepage on September 5. It's no longer on the homepage; in fact, it's no longer a page that the online user can navigate to using menus, but hundreds of thousands of unique visitors are still accessing the poll and voting. How is that possible, and is that a good thing? More on that in a moment, after a side trip through the world of Internet "cookies."

PBS headquarters made the decision on September 22, to implement a cookie registration system on the Palin poll. That system is now part of the poll's inner code, and as of September 23, a user can only vote once per computer. PBS acted because the entire pbs.org site had been experiencing system overload due to massive accessing of the poll.

The poll asks the question, "Do you think that Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President of the United States?" The user answers clicks to answer "Yes" or "No." From September 5 to September 22, our software allowed online users to vote repeatedly. Sounds bad, right? But we at NOW had serious concerns about user privacy. "Cookies" are small text files placed on the user's system without that person's knowledge. Many computer users regard them as invasive.

Other possible fixes: we could have insisted on voters registering with their email addresses. But people could still vote several times using different email addresses. Or we could insist on a unique identifier - a user's social security number. This was clearly way over the line in violation of user privacy.

What are other media organizations doing? CNN.com does exactly what we had been doing--their polls allow multiple votes. The website of the newspaper USA Today also uses polls, called "USA TODAY Snapshot", but it employs the "cookie" approach to restrict multiple voting.

So, is the Palin poll now "scientific"? Absolutely not. It is still subject to large scale efforts on the left and the right to mobilize people to vote. The poll has become something of a Rorschach test, a tiny political marker in a tightly contested race. Over the past two weeks, the results of the poll see-sawed back and forth from a majority saying "No" to a majority saying, "Yes". At the moment the single-voter system was implemented, it was close to a tie: 50% say Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President, and 48% say no.
Those results, in my view, are actually a measure of the mobilization and manipulation efforts by partisans on both sides. Now it will be all about mobilization, and less about manipulation. Blogs on the left and right are circulating viral emails with the exact address of the poll.

Some users have raised questions about our decision to collect opinion about Sarah Palin's qualifications in a poll. For a more complete discussion, take a moment to read the September 19 column of Michael Getler, the PBS Ombudsman.

The Palin poll is no longer in our home page rotation. We've moved on to other polls; each week you'll find one in the bottom right corner of our home page. The current poll asks, "Who do you trust more to fix the nation's economic mess--Barack Obama or John McCain?" It has already attracted a lot of interest.

And let's keep in mind the purpose of these weekly polls. They invite people who might not ordinarily come to our site to participate, and they encourage people to explore the deep journalism that is offered throughout NOW's nearly 10,000 web pages and 1,000 video streams. They don't provide the nuanced interpretation of our investigative journalism and deep content, but do provide a gateway to that content. An example: on Friday, September 19, we aired a one-hour special about women and politics on our broadcast. In the days since the air date, that online video has become the most viewed video on the PBS Election Site. For online users who are deeply interested in the issues raised during this election, the polls are only a starting point. There's a lot more to explore, to read, and to view.

I welcome your thoughts and comments about the Palin poll. Please use this specific Feedback Forum to share your opinions.

Follow Joel B. Schwartzberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/now_on_pbs

Comments

[pollhater]

To call these polls "unscientific" is like calling Hitler "unfriendly". These polls are ANTI-scientific and intellectually dishonest.
I'm sorry to report that a cookie trap is a very cheap lock, and as they say, cheap locks only keep the honest people out. I tried to alert the people at NOW that their polls are trivially hackable (3 emails, 4 phone calls) but they ignored me. To prove the point I'm slamming their current poll. Obama now leads McCain 96% to 2%. It should be 99% by morning. Go take a look.
It took me 20 minutes to write the slammer. I'd estimate conservatively that there are 100,000 people like me who could do likewise. Other slammers will mask their deed by balancing the figures to something plausible. I really doubt the Palin Poll received as many "votes" as they naively suppose. (The total is currently over 49 MILLION.) But we'll never know.
These online polls are 100% useless crap. They gauge nothing but gullibility and I for one have had enough.

[gwr72]

Hey PBS, Now, the only poll that counts is on Nov. 4th. Your responsibilty is to report
news, and not trying usurp the election. People will have to make up their minds on the
facts, and not poll numbers.

[davidword]

maverick
n.
1. An unbranded range animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother, traditionally considered the property of the first person who brands it.
(definition of maverick by the Free Online Dictionary)

[larry278]

If you recall, Arianna circulated a no polls petition a few months ago. If you signed Ms Huffington's petition, you pledged not to participate in any poll. Seeing your blog about the PBS, whatever they call it at this moment, makes me glad that I don't participate in polls. The next time your PBS station has a pledge drive, aka begathon, remembering this ugly incident will induce you not to send another cent to PBS. I hope being starved of funds induces PBS to change its polling procedures & returns to the straight, narrow path of honesty.

[Bitsko]

Thanks for the info. I had no idea it was such a big deal (though I did click "no" like 5 million times!).

[CaptainStormfield]

Cookies? I dont keep no stinking Cookies :) Seriously I had no idea that many people were going there.
But also.. Use Firefox and set your options to "delete cookies after each session" Close and reopen
frequently.

[ajax2]

Why they didn't take it down is a mystery.

[SPiHC]

Don't you think the better poll might have been:

"Considering how little access the press has had to Sarah Palin, do you believe you can make an informed judgement on her ability to be Vice President?"

In addition, if you had the opportunity to ask Sarah Palin one question that she was forced to answer, what would it be?

Leave your own question for Palin, or vote for other people's questions.

www.OneQuestionForPalin.com

[bayside]

I have new respect for PBS. You saw you could vote again and again by cheating and you shut it down because you wanted honesty. How refreshing from a member of the media..I heard Rove was paying people to vote for Palin so he could brag about this poll. Dont know if its true, but I dont discount anything anymore. I hope this wanting honesty by our media is catching from you. Thanks again..

[Bettysdad]

A few weeks ago, NOW had a poll showing that over 70% of their voters would base their vote on religion.

[krocklin]

I doubt if your putting equal blame on the "left" and the "right" is correct. The poll was being abused by rightwingers. Now watchers would hardly think Palin competent or qualified.

In fact I'm not sure if any poll would give Palin 50% on this matter.

[TheProverbialMan]

Agreed. Anyone who watches PBS regularly would have a much better grasp and judgement of the situation to see through the "Trojan Moose".

Look at the Economists World wide poll...
http://www.economist.com/vote2008/

[ballerinaX]

Gee thank you !. This poll had become monster spam

[NoSillyName]

I thought something was wrong with that poll. It is extremely doubtful that "NOW" viewers, or PBS viewers in general, would believe that Palin is fit to be president. Utter nonsense.

[FirstShirt]

"Manipulation" is a term of are meaning it didn't turn out the way the media wanted it to.

[tryharder2think]

Sorry your honesty flies about as far as the mud in your eye...

[noamjunior]

Cons somehow think that repeatedly clicking their mouse over a little button on a webpage will magically make their inexeperienced, inept, and ideologically rigid VP candidate somehow qualified for a job she barely understands