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Marriage Poll (yes, again. Bite me.)
Dec. 20th, 2003 03:48 pmThe Marriage Poll that I've been talking about for the past couple entries has changed significantly over the past few days from something that seemed (to me) to be seriously biased (95% against homosexual marraige) to a much more expected rate (about 54% in favor of allowing homosexual marriage.)
Around 10pm last night, they redid the site so that the results were only displayed on the page that you vote on, rather than on the other page. I have fairly accurate stats from 10pm Wednesday night until that time yesterday graphed. You can see from this that the results go through a nightly low in changing, and then increase during the day or afternoon.
http://peanut.sytes.net/marriagepoll/fri10pm.png
Note that this is a graph of percentage changes over 5 minute intervals. There are some intervals stored where the site is down, but I assume that during these times, no one is voting, so they're removed rather than left in as discontinuities. (Also, that makes formatting the data much easier for me).
In the process of following this poll, I have gotten over 1000 hits to the logs of 5 minute recent records. I have recieved emails, comments, and IMs thanking me, praising me, and in some cases, arguing with me.
3000 votes were removed from the poll at one point, which is why I started this. The AFA claimed these results were posted by an auto-responder, a fact which was later confirmed.
However, I still have doubts as to the validity of the results of this poll. I see trends which interest me and amaze me. For example, contrary to all other parts of the internet, conservatives on this topic appear to be online at 6am. From a comment of mine: http://www.livejournal.com/users/crschmidt/234947.html?thread=1028803
I have looked in every journal i could find linking to my site and seen how people are responding. Lots of people using it as an information source - it's an interesting demonstration of how a sub-meme within a meme can spread so much more easily. No one has to bring the topic up again - just add a link in a comment, and all of a sudden, I get 5-10 hits.
Also, the power of the internet, and LiveJournal specifically, is readily apparent in this poll. There are 4 times as many votes today as there were a few days ago, and I have seen information on this poll linked from so many places I can't even count them anymore.
It's incredible what the internet can do.
Around 10pm last night, they redid the site so that the results were only displayed on the page that you vote on, rather than on the other page. I have fairly accurate stats from 10pm Wednesday night until that time yesterday graphed. You can see from this that the results go through a nightly low in changing, and then increase during the day or afternoon.
http://peanut.sytes.net/marriagepoll/fri10pm.png
Note that this is a graph of percentage changes over 5 minute intervals. There are some intervals stored where the site is down, but I assume that during these times, no one is voting, so they're removed rather than left in as discontinuities. (Also, that makes formatting the data much easier for me).
In the process of following this poll, I have gotten over 1000 hits to the logs of 5 minute recent records. I have recieved emails, comments, and IMs thanking me, praising me, and in some cases, arguing with me.
3000 votes were removed from the poll at one point, which is why I started this. The AFA claimed these results were posted by an auto-responder, a fact which was later confirmed.
However, I still have doubts as to the validity of the results of this poll. I see trends which interest me and amaze me. For example, contrary to all other parts of the internet, conservatives on this topic appear to be online at 6am. From a comment of mine: http://www.livejournal.com/users/crschmidt/234947.html?thread=1028803
I have looked in every journal i could find linking to my site and seen how people are responding. Lots of people using it as an information source - it's an interesting demonstration of how a sub-meme within a meme can spread so much more easily. No one has to bring the topic up again - just add a link in a comment, and all of a sudden, I get 5-10 hits.
Also, the power of the internet, and LiveJournal specifically, is readily apparent in this poll. There are 4 times as many votes today as there were a few days ago, and I have seen information on this poll linked from so many places I can't even count them anymore.
It's incredible what the internet can do.