Twist on Biased Polls: Rigged Focus Groups

Digging into the internals on polls and looking for bias is a geeky passion of mine. Here's a new twist on the phenomenon: rigged focus groups.

So on September 3, Free Press hosted a voter panel and got their reaction to Sarah Palin's speech. A number of the independent voters were somewhat harsh in their assessment. A little digging has determined some of these same people were used in a voter panel to judge the reaction to Michelle Obama's speech on August 25. In that case, these independent voters were quite positive towards Michelle's speech.

It turns out that two of the people involved in these groups were members of Code Pink, the extreme anti-Iraq war group. One of them was involved in a hunger strike for noted anti-war nut Cindy Sheehan.

In case you aren't convinced that just being anti-war disqualifies you from being an independent, I'll post the following picture. This photo is from !!WaynePhotoGuy and he has all rights reserved. (Photo was found vis Ann Althouse.)


Now this isn't a photo of one of the people involved in the fixed focus groups, described above. But picture in your mind a typical independent voter. Is the above picture representative?

Sadly while many might have read the results of the focus groups, few will learn of the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes.