Who will you vote for in the Democratic primary?
Total Votes: 9589
Chris Gabrieli
64% (6131)
Deval Patrick
33% (3211)
Tom Reilly
2% (194)
None of the above
1% (53)
While I will admit that this means nothing with respect to the primary day outcome, it does show that Chris has entusiatic support and that Reilly’s people are not energized.
Please share widely!
This may not be specifically indicative as to what the actual #s will be in two + weeks, but without question it underscores the growth and enthusiasm of the Gabrieli campaign and its supporters. We have always known that Patrick has passionate support, but this is a very encouraging sign for Gabrieli. On the other hand, Reilly is more competitive with “none of the above” than a living, breathing opponent. He is certainly not done due to this poll, but the extent of the margin between him and his actual opponents may be a precursor of things to come.
Unfortunately, most of the members of Chris’ large family are too young to vote. :>)
Does Boston Magazine’s website require one to register 3 weeks in advance of the vote?
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Are they using Diebold machines?
that if Deval was in the lead you’d be praising his superior grassroots?! :>)
I’d be praising the loyalty of his extended family.
namely here. I’ll do it again.
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This is Boston Magazine we’re talking about. Have you read Boston Magazine? You know, from cover to cover? If so, you’d find: * loads of ads for high priced products. The auto ads are Porche and Ferarri, not VW or Ford. Hell, there’s like a 30-page-ad for a showroom house in there, complete with au pair suite above the 3 car garage. * many pages of photos. Not nature photos, or landscape photos, or even HMV-esque shots. No, these are polaroids of trendy people in trendy places wearing trendy clothes photos. A sort of “who drinks $10 martinis in sleek clubs at high profile charity events” kind of spread. Many pages.
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My impression: a disproportionate number of these folks don’t even vote in general elections; I doubt they could tell you the month that the primary is held. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these folks both invest in their local communities and are able to play “look at me!” for Boston Magazine. Hell, I hope I’m wrong… Boston is a liberal town, and more voters (and more money!) should, in aggregate, help my team. But, the signs point to apathy — young, too wealthy to need government, and too busy turning to the Fashion Page to notice the Local section.
You know, the original post was about an online poll, which is worth about a bucket of warm spit, anyway — actually less. Greencape made a very limited point that at least there are (maybe) enough Gabs fans willing to click a web poll. I don’t think he was citing Boston Magazine as any particular authority. No press release: “BOSTON MAGAZINE PEGS GABRIELI WITH 70 POINT LEAD OVER RIVALS” or whatever. Entertainment only.
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By the way, I feel obligated to ask everyone to pick up the September issue. 😉
that I could not help but respond to and update Michael Forbes Wilcox’s citing of this very Boston Magazine poll in another post. Neverthless your point is correct, Charley, I was simply trying to point out that just maybe there are passionate Gabrieli supporters out there too. Underestimate Gabrieli supporters at your own peril.
to mention the very passionate, well paid Gabrieli consultants. Why, I would bet that they are even more passionate than regular supporters based upon their pay! After all, what’s an election without big money, lots of experienced PR people preparing TV ads and at least one candidate who’s willing to spend millions to reach those independent minded voters?
and underestimating the Gabrieli organization will result in your guy, Patrick, coming in second place on Primary Day. As I said to you in another post but it is worth repeating here as well, Lolorb, some of the Deval supporters and that includes you have gone out of their way to downplay the Gabrieli team. Frankly, it’s become tired and insulting. We are not paid staffers. As a matter of fact, we have had hundreds of volunteers come to Gabrieli GOTV meetings.
bidness as usual. I happen to know that the Gabs campaign knows that the only reason he’s on the ballot is because the Patrick campaign wasn’t willing to stoop to the level of using the actual, stated, published party rules. Maybe you need to learn some more about that before using inappropriate terms in describing me or anyone else who wants to see a candidate win on his own merits. Maybe you need to ask some questions or maybe you don’t want to.
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I’m not close enough to the Gabrieli campaign to dispute that. I do know, though, that Deval’s campaign turfed the mayor of Malden out of the convention along with others. So much for getting out the vote this november there!
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What could Deval have done that he didn’t, keeping in mind that for every Gabrieli delegate thrown out of the convention, a Reilly delegate would have been instructed to switch their vote.
The majority of Deval supporters were obnoxious and in the faces of those who dared to exercise their freedom and vote for Gabrieli. I know because I was there and I was one of the 702 who proudly voted for Gabrieli and wasn’t intimidated by some of the overly zealous(rabid) Deval supporters. I will tell you this Lolorb, the aggressive tactics of some of the Deval supporters have turned many voters away from Deval.
Chris Gabrieli supporters are more likely to go to bostonmagazine.com and Tom Reilly’s supporters are least likely to be on Boston magazine’s site (or on sites that link to it). Which makes sense, since I’d expect Reilly’s voters to skew older.
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Also, before coming to any conclusions, it’s important to understand that the results of “unscientific” online polls can be easily manipulated by anyone with motivation to do so. I’m NOT saying that’s the reason Gabrieli is so far ahead in the Boston mag online poll, and I certainly don’t believe anyone actually connected with the campaign would do so. But people need to know that anyone who’s Web-savvy and highly motivated could go into their Firefox’s cookie management tool, delete the cookie that prevents them from voting more than once, and vote as many times as they’d like.
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Anyone with a bit of programming savvy could probably write themselves a script that votes multiple times for them.
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So it’s a fun little poll, but I wouldn’t jump to ANY conclusions about the level of any candidate’s enthusiastic support.
…how much would you need to pay someone to write one of those nifty little programs to stuff the e-ballot box?
are useless. Tongue and cheek, indeed.
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Ever hear of the term “freeping a poll?”
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Lemme me help:
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Influencing polls
Some forum posts are aimed at influencing polls on other websites. Media websites (including newspapers, television networks, and America Online) run occasional “polls” that do not use the sampling methods of formal opinion polls, but instead invite everyone to respond. Known as “freeping” a poll, it involves posting a message thread directing members to vote en masse in an online poll and including a link to the poll with the intended goal of significantly affecting the final outcome. The practice of alerting members of online voting opportunities is not unique to Free Republic and is employed by many other activist websites of all political stripes, however, Free Republic is believed to be the first online message board to try to influence online polls in this manner. The Free RepublicÂ’s members have been known to have been involved in vandalism against websites they perceive to be liberal, with administrators often calling for a coordinated [9][10] vandalism against information websites they perceived to have a liberal bias, primarily related to major racial and political topics.
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Personally, I spend more time contacting voters than worrying about online polls. They mean nothing more than some people have too much time on their hands — especially the Boston Magazine poll where you can vote more than once.
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