[Ads-l] dark poll

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Fri Oct 28 17:52:12 UTC 2016


In related "dark" news, the Trump campaign is reportedly putting up "dark
posts" on Facebook...

---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go
Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to
shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,”
says a senior official... On Oct. 24, Trump’s team began placing spots on
select African American radio stations. In San Antonio, a young staffer
showed off a South Park-style animation he’d created of Clinton delivering
the “super predator” line (using audio from her original 1996 sound bite),
as cartoon text popped up around her: “Hillary Thinks African Americans are
Super Predators.” The animation will be delivered to certain African
American voters through Facebook “dark posts”—nonpublic posts whose
viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, “only the
people we want to see it, see it.” The aim is to depress Clinton’s vote
total. “We know because we’ve modeled this,” says the official. “It will
dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out.”
---


On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Oct 27, 2016, at 10:15 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > "For you, it exists?"
> >
> > It may "exist" for Humpty Dumpty too, but that doesn't make it real.
> >
> > If Saucermen from Planet Elmo exist "for me," it makes no difference to
> > verifiable reality. They remain a fantasy.
> >
> > Wouldn't it be truly effective only if most or all of the (supposedly...)
> > competing polls were "dark"?
> >
> > "Dark," by the by, is an odd word-choice. Perhaps somebody was
> > misremembering "black ops" and  "black budgets."
>
> Maybe for the relevant folks (for whom such polls exist), "black polls"
> would be ruled out on other grounds...
>
> LH
> >
> > Still waiting for evidence of "dark polling" as a viable enterprise
> outside
> > of  state-run media.
> >
> > JL
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 8:16 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> If you think Reuters is manipulating its poll results to favor the
> >> Democrats, then, for you, it exists. (Check Breitbart if you are truly
> >> interested.)
> >>
> >> On Oct 27, 2016 6:44 AM, "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> The question remains: do what "they" call "dark polls" even exist -
> >>> outside, perhaps, of places like Russia?
> >>>
> >>> And do "they" encompass anybody beyond Mr. DT and his alt-right
> buddies?
> >>>
> >>> JL
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 11:33 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I believe that Trump believes that any poll that shows him losing is
> >>>> purposely trying to make him lose = a dark poll.
> >>>>
> >>>> On Oct 26, 2016 7:46 PM, "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> >> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>> On Oct 26, 2016, at 5:02 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Sure -- all the wrong ones.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> There have always been accusations against polling organizations
> >> that
> >>>>> they
> >>>>>> are biased, either intentionally or not. Didn't the Goldwater
> >>> campaign
> >>>>>> accuse the Gallup organization of being a "propaganda machine"?
> >>> (Didn't
> >>>>> the
> >>>>>> Gallup organization predict Romney the victor over Obama?)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> DanG
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I know there were some Republican-friendly polls that were apparently
> >>>>> widely believed at the time that predicted Romney, but I don't recall
> >>>>> whether Gallup was among them.  There was the famous example (I
> >> assume
> >>>>> actual and not apocryphal) of polls that predicted a landslide defeat
> >>> of
> >>>>> the Democratic candidate (Truman vs. Dewey? FDR vs. somebody?) that
> >> was
> >>>>> flawed by having been conducted by telephone at a time when many
> >> voters
> >>>>> were too poor to have one.  But that wasn't a dark poll, just a
> >> stupid
> >>>> one.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> LH
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 6:41 AM, Jonathan Lighter <
> >>>>> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> >>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Have we any proof that "they" call "them" "dark polls"?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> That seems like a very strange concept for any polling
> >> organization.
> >>>> The
> >>>>>>> "dark polls" that the T---p alluded to were polls from prominent,
> >>>>> reputable
> >>>>>>> sources indicating he's behind.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Can anyone cite some actual, phony "dark polls" in the United
> >>> States?
> >>>>>>>
>

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