Giuliani billed NYC agencies for booty calls

[Kembal]

From the Politico (I'm only copying the first few paragraphs, it's a 3 page article):

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/7073.html


Giuliani billed obscure agencies for trips

By: Ben Smith
Nov 28, 2007 02:47 PM EST

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

At the time, the mayor’s office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing “security.”

The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail.

Giuliani’s relationship with Nathan is old news now, and Giuliani regularly asks voters on the campaign trail to forgive his "mistakes."

It’s also impossible to know whether the purpose of all the Hamptons trips was to see Nathan. A Giuliani spokeswoman declined to discuss any aspect of this story, which was explained in detail to her earlier this week.

But the practice of transferring the travel expenses of Giuliani's security detail to the accounts of obscure mayoral offices has never been brought to light, despite behind-the-scenes criticism from the city comptroller weeks after Giuliani left office.

The expenses first surfaced as Giuliani's two terms as mayor of New York drew to a close in 2001, when a city auditor stumbled across something unusual: $34,000 worth of travel expenses buried in the accounts of the New York City Loft Board.

When the city's fiscal monitor asked for an explanation, Giuliani's aides refused, citing "security," said Jeff Simmons, a spokesman for the city comptroller.

But American Express bills and travel documents obtained by Politico suggest another reason City Hall may have considered the documents sensitive: They detail three summers of visits to Southampton, the Long Island town where Nathan had an apartment.

Auditors "were unable to verify that these expenses were for legitimate or necessary purposes," City Comptroller William Thompson wrote of the expenses from fiscal year 2000, which covers parts of 1999 and 2000.

The letter, whose existence has not been previously reported, was also obtained under the Freedom of Information Law.

There's a lot more detail in the article, but to sum it up, Giuliani hid the expenses for these trips to see his mistress (now his third wife) in random NYC agencies and then refused to explain them when asked.

My guess is that his candidacy is doomed now.

[Gan]

.....


It’s also impossible to know whether the purpose of all the Hamptons trips was to see Nathan. A Giuliani spokeswoman declined to discuss any aspect of this story, which was explained in detail to her earlier this week.

[Bobmuhthol]

LMAO @ Gan

[Jayvn]

I VOTE RUDY

[TheEschaton]

Hmmm, here's the pertinent question:

If the travel expenses are for his security detail, what is the security team supposed to do when he travels somewhere far for personal reasons?

IE, is it a state provided detail, and what're the regulations for the detail on Rudy's personal time? I'm sure there was probably something about continually shuffling off to private locations far away, in which case, Rudy is wrong.

Oh, and Gan, it doesn't matter insomuch as WHO he saw, but the fact that the expenses seem A) unauthorized, and B) hidden to prevent the knowledge of that fact.

-TheE-

[Artha]

Gan
You might as well put your fingers in your ears and scream NANANANANA I CANT HEAR YOU.

[Gan]

I love the conjecture in this thread.

3 stars

[Daniel]

I love how republicans like to make off the wall conjectures about anything that suits them, but need the word of god to believe anything bad about a republican.

[Krendeli]

I love how republicans like to make off the wall conjectures about anything that suits them, but need the word of god to believe anything bad about a republican.

FTW

[Gan]

Hmmm, here's the pertinent question:

If the travel expenses are for his security detail, what is the security team supposed to do when he travels somewhere far for personal reasons?
Agreed, if its a foregone conclusion that his security detail is state/city provided 24/7 then what does it matter where he goes? Unless he's abusing his role as mayor by pursuing personal agendas when he should be working. The difficult part is that a mayoral job is not an 8 to 5 punch a clock job. So where are the boundaries between personal and professional time?


IE, is it a state provided detail, and what're the regulations for the detail on Rudy's personal time? I'm sure there was probably something about continually shuffling off to private locations far away, in which case, Rudy is wrong.
At this point its not clear what the trips were for, if the trips were of a personal or professional nature, and if his detail is a 24/7 coverage. I'm sure that will be addressed soon, or at least I hope so.


Oh, and Gan, it doesn't matter insomuch as WHO he saw, but the fact that the expenses seem A) unauthorized, and B) hidden to prevent the knowledge of that fact.
Unauthorized by whom? Who authorizes what the mayor of a city can and can not do? He's the boss eh?
I agree that the fact that the expenses were not accounted for in a straightforward manner and that alludes to impropriety; however, at this juncture its nothing more than a book keeping matter. Until it can be determined if his security detail is a 24/7 coverage and if the trips were allowed under the rules by which a mayor is governed, if there are rules outside city/state/federal laws that govern what a mayor can and cant do and where the dividing line is between personal and professional time then its purely media fodder and conjecture.

Do I think this will doom his candidacy? Laughably no, unless something far more serious can be discovered in this issue. And it definately has not undermined my opinion that he's the candidate that best represents who I want as a leader.

[Kefka]

What sucked was that he provided security for Nathan, who was his girlfriend at the time, but none for his wife in the middle of their divorce.

[Kembal]

For fun, I'm going to highlight some more stuff from the article:


Both the travel expenses and the appearance that his office made efforts to conceal them could open Giuliani to criticism that his personal life spilled over into his official duties and his expenses grew in his final years in office.

It is impossible to say which of the 11 Long Island trips indicated by credit card receipts were to visit Nathan and which were for other purposes.

Eight of those trips, however, were not noted on Giuliani's official schedule, which is now available in the city's municipal archive and contains many details of Giuliani's official and unofficial life.

The billing practices, however, drew formal attention on Jan. 24, 2002, when Thompson, the city comptroller, wrote the newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg, a confidential letter.

One of his auditors, he wrote, had stumbled upon the unexplained travel expenses during a routine audit of the Loft Board, a tiny branch of city government that regulates certain apartments.

Broadening the inquiry, the comptroller wrote, auditors found similar expenses at a range of other unlikely agencies: $10,054 billed to the Office for People With Disabilities and $29,757 to the Procurement Policy Board.

The next year, yet another obscure department, the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office, was billed around $400,000 for travel.

You know, that's a pretty expensive security detail for 400k.

As for definite proof that one of the trips was to visit Nathan:


The first trip to Southampton appearing in the travel documents runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, 1999.

Four police officers spent the night at the Atlantic Utopia Lifestyle Inn, according to an approval request for official out-of-city travel, billing the city $1,016.20.

Giuliani’s private schedule, available from the municipal archive, lists no events on Long Island that day.

The New York Post reported the following year that Giuliani "had long weekend visits with gal pal Judi Nathan at her Southampton, L.I., condo last summer, according to neighbors who said the mayor did little to conceal their relationship.”

The neighbors called their relationship and their time in Nathan's two-bedroom condo overlooking Noyack Bay "an open secret.”

"Several residents of the condo sometimes asked Giuliani's driver and members of his security entourage to turn off their car engines," the Post reported.

That first trip was followed by at least 10 more, according to the travel and credit card documents.

So, he visits his girlfriend with his security detail in tow, bills the security and travel expenses to random city agencies to obscure them, and on top of that, spends over 400k doing so.

Obviously, when the man needs a booty call, he doesn't go second rate.

[Kembal]

Oh hell, now it looks like Giuliani gave her a police driver:


Giuliani's Mistress Used N.Y. Police as Taxi Service
November 29, 2007 3:18 PM

Richard Esposito Reports:

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

"She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

New York papers reported in 2000 that the city had provided a security detail for Nathan, who became Giuliani's third wife after his divorce from Donna Hanover, who also had her own police security detail at the same time.

The former city officials said Giuliani expanded the budget for his security detail at the time. Politico.com reported yesterday that many of the security expenses were initially billed to obscure city agencies, effectively hiding them from oversight.

The former officials told ABCNews.com the extra costs involved overtime and per diem costs for officers traveling with Giuliani to secret weekend rendezvous with Nathan in the fashionable Hamptons resort area on Long Island.

When the New York City comptroller began to question the accounting, Mayor Giuliani's office declined to provide details to city security, officials told ABCNews.com today.

"The Comptroller's Office made repeated requests for the information in 2001 and 2002 but was informed that due to security concerns the information could not be provided," a spokesperson for the comptroller's office said.

Appearing in public for the first time today, Giuliani told ABC News the accusations he assigned a police security detail to his mistress and helped to hide the expenses in the mammoth New York City budget "a pre-debate hit job."

"I'm sorry, but I still don't understand why they filed these expenses the way they did," he said.

Former officials close to Giuliani say he had "zero" to do with how the police security expenses for Judith Nathan, who he since married, were accounted in the city budget.

The Giuliani campaign said it would also provide a former deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to respond to the allegations later today.

Giuliani is expected to appear on CNBC at 6 p.m. today to answer questions about the accounting procedures.

Apparently, it's a felony in New York to use government employees as chaffeurs and aides for your spouse and family. I'm just gonna guess it might be even worse to do it for your girlfriend.

Gan, you really sure this isn't going to kill his candidacy?

[Gan]

Oh hell, now it looks like Giuliani gave her a police driver:



Apparently, it's a felony in New York to use government employees as chaffeurs and aides for your spouse and family. I'm just gonna guess it might be even worse to do it for your girlfriend.

Gan, you really sure this isn't going to kill his candidacy?

If he did not reimburse or pay directly for these services, then yes its a bad bad deal.

If there was reimbursement or direct payment, its a non issue.

Time will tell it seems.

[Drew]

I'm not voting for Rudy. That said, it might be like the Secret Service where they protect you during leisure and business. If that's the case these payments may be legit but were billed to obscure agencies to keep the relationship on the DL. If that's the case this probably isn't illegal, just shady.


If it is true, I hope it all comes out now so there is 0 chance of him winning the primary.

[thefarmer]

If he did not reimburse or pay directly for these services, then yes its a bad bad deal.

If there was reimbursement or direct payment, its a non issue.

Time will tell it seems.

For clarification.

So it's ok to use taxpayer's money anyway a politician sees fit.. as long as they pay it back? With or without making it public the incident happened at all?


What if mayor whoever goes to vegas and uses the city's money to win huge? If he pays back what he took from tax funds is it ok?

Extreme example, I know.

[Parkbandit]

I love how republicans like to make off the wall conjectures about anything that suits them, but need the word of god to believe anything bad about a republican.

I love how democrats like to make off the wall conjectures about anything that suits them, but never believe anything bad about a democrat, even when faced with the facts.

See what I did there?

[Kembal]

I love how democrats like to make off the wall conjectures about anything that suits them, but never believe anything bad about a democrat, even when faced with the facts.

See what I did there?

You posted the dumbest response possible?

[DeV]

If it is true, I hope it all comes out now so there is 0 chance of him winning the primary.Agreed x10.

Either way, I hope there's no chance in hell he wins the primary.

[Sean of the Thread]

You guys aren't even republicans.. what do you care if he wins the primary?

[Sean of the Thread]

Oh and

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b236/Japgross/goodkng2.jpg

[Gan]

You guys aren't even republicans.. what do you care if he wins the primary?

Because he's the only one of the front runners that has a snowball's chance in hell of beating Hillary.

[Daniel]

You mean Obama.

[Gan]

You mean Obama.

... will make a great VP under Hillary.


I wonder if she'll make him bring her fresh cigars every week.

[Daniel]

We'll see ;)

[Jayvn]

We could never survive as a country with a man who may or may not be seeing a woman on the side while he's in office. O.o

[Sean of the Thread]

Who the hell is going to vote for Obama?!?!

[Gan]

Daniel

[Parkbandit]

Because he's the only one of the front runners that has a snowball's chance in hell of beating Hillary.


Incorrect actually. According to a recent Zogby poll, almost any Republican candidate beats Hillary. I think Ron Paul even does ffs.

Hillary has SOOO many negatives, and the media seems to be willing to let her burn. I never thought I would see the hypocrisy of Bill's "I've been against Iraq from the start" covered by most of the media.. but it is. Oprah is backing Obama.. and I think more libs are willing to jump off the burning Clinton ship and hop aboard his.

[Gan]

Wait until Hillary starts releasing all the shit she's got on Obama.

The Clinton war machine has barely shifted into 2nd gear, and its still very early.

[DeV]

You guys aren't even republicans.. what do you care if he wins the primary?
Because I happen to give a shit, that's why.

[Sean of the Thread]

No need to get snippy I was just curious.

If you care that much about the republican primary then it sounds like you don't have much faith in any of the democratic candidates.

[Suppa Hobbit Mage]

Judith Nathan is much hotter than his 2nd wife. Nice trade up, IMO.

[TheEschaton]

Incorrect actually. According to a recent Zogby poll, almost any Republican candidate beats Hillary. I think Ron Paul even does ffs.


Zogby's poll was a self-selecting internet poll. Every actually random, scientifically-selected sample has pointed to Hillary winning.

[DeV]

No need to get snippy I was just curious.

If you care that much about the republican primary then it sounds like you don't have much faith in any of the democratic candidates.Nah, I wasn't getting snippy at all, I just happen to have a potty mouth.

I could say the same about Republicans who quasi lambaste the more colorful Democratic hopefuls, but that'd just be dumb. I care about politics, period.

[Sean of the Thread]

I myself have no idea where I'm at in this election.

It's early however.. got a shit fuck of time to see what turd floats to the top yet.

[Parkbandit]

Zogby's poll was a self-selecting internet poll. Every actually random, scientifically-selected sample has pointed to Hillary winning.

Instead of using telephones, they used a larger sample size across the internet. You still had to sign up for this... so don't make it sound like a bunch of Republicans got on to skew up the numbers.

Sample size is about 10x larger than most of the telephone polls. To simply dismiss it because the results are not to your liking is ignorant. Polling will be done using this method from now on.. and will push out the telephone polling method very soon.

I view any kind of poll with extreme skepticism.. but I don't see the difference between this poll and any Gallop poll.

Who the fuck actually answers telephone polling anyway?

[Parkbandit]

Wait until Hillary starts releasing all the shit she's got on Obama.

The Clinton war machine has barely shifted into 2nd gear, and its still very early.


Exactly.

I find it amusing how often we hear about the Evil Karl Rove and his political maneuvering. The Clinton War Machine makes the Rove machine look like a joke.

God.. I can only hope that Clinton finishes third in Iowa.. then the real fun will begin.

[Daniel]

Instead of using telephones, they used a larger sample size across the internet. You still had to sign up for this... so don't make it sound like a bunch of Republicans got on to skew up the numbers.

Sample size is about 10x larger than most of the telephone polls. To simply dismiss it because the results are not to your liking is ignorant. Polling will be done using this method from now on.. and will push out the telephone polling method very soon.

I view any kind of poll with extreme skepticism.. but I don't see the difference between this poll and any Gallop poll.

Who the fuck actually answers telephone polling anyway?


The problem is that you had to sign up for it. It's not a random sample. It's a sample of people who wanted to sign up, and did. For that reason alone it will probably not replace telephone or door to door polling methods.

[Sean of the Thread]

The problem is that you had to sign up for it. It's not a random sample. It's a sample of people who wanted to sign up, and did. For that reason alone it will probably not replace telephone or door to door polling methods.

So dems didn't bother to sign up for it thus skewing the results?

[Daniel]

Has absolutely nothing to do with dems or republicans. It's selector bias. It's not like it fucking matters. Polls are only an indication of what *may* happen within a specific interval and the way elections are, it can go either way.

[TheEschaton]

You had to sign up. Yes. That's exactly my point.

But it being on the internet is not all pervasive as telephones. The democratic base is in labor and the poor and elderly. Also three populations who are least likely to have internet access in the home, and if they do, least likely to use it for anything beyond email/chatting.

That it is an ACTIVE polling method, IE, someone had to sign up for it, as opposed to a PASSIVE polling method, IE, the pollster comes to you, makes the polls unreliable.

You know the results are less reliable than other polls, yet you justify it because it has a 10x the size of a telephone poll. Bigger isn't better, PB.

-TheE-

[CrystalTears]

Bigger isn't better.
You guys still believe that? :D

[Sean of the Thread]

The democratic base is in labor and the poor and elderly. lol

Also three populations who are least likely to have internet access in the home, and if they do, least likely to use it for anything beyond email/chatting.



http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b236/Japgross/internet.jpg

The remaining 30% live in the smokey mountains and have to walk for weeks to reach a poll just to not be able to read it anyways.

[TheEschaton]

Again, I wasn't talking about penis size, in which bigger is better. I was talking about sample size, if it is bigger, it is not necessarily better, unless it is just as random.

-TheE-

[Gan]

The problem is that you had to sign up for it. It's not a random sample. It's a sample of people who wanted to sign up, and did. For that reason alone it will probably not replace telephone or door to door polling methods.

Your participation in a telephone poll is just as voluntary. If you dont want to participate you can always say no, hang up, or dont answer. People who participate in telephone polls want to participate, they just dont have the liberty of seeking it out.

Much the same as refusing to go through the sign up procedure on the internet poll.

[CrystalTears]

Actually for polling and statistical data, it seems to provide better results when they have a larger amount of people involved. I don't see how the method matters though.

I guess people are saying the republicans united and signed up together in order to poll, while the democrats united and decided to boycott it? Heh.

[Sean of the Thread]

Actually for polling and statistical data, it seems to provide better results when they have a larger amount of people involved. I don't see how the method matters though.

I guess people are saying the republicans united and signed up together in order to poll, while the democrats united and decided to boycott it? Heh.

lol eggg zact ly

[Daniel]

Your participation in a telephone poll is just as voluntary. If you dont want to participate you can always say no, hang up, or dont answer. People who participate in telephone polls want to participate, they just dont have the liberty of seeking it out.

Much the same as refusing to go through the sign up procedure on the internet poll.


Well, I'm sure most staticians would disagree with you.


Self-selection bias, which is possible whenever the group of people being studied has any form of control over whether to participate. Participants' decision to participate may be correlated with traits that affect the study, making the participants a non-representative sample. For example, people who have strong opinions or substantial knowledge may be more willing to spend time answering a survey than those who don't.

Statistics is not an exact science. You may be right that there is no bias.

However, there are definitely more factors at play for someone finding an internet site (Probability p), Seeing the poll (Probability Q) and Signing up to take the poll (Prob R), and then actually taking the poll (Prob S). Versus you having a phone (Prob ~ 1), You taking the poll (Prob s).

[Parkbandit]

Again, I wasn't talking about penis size, in which bigger is better. I was talking about sample size, if it is bigger, it is not necessarily better, unless it is just as random.

-TheE-

I don't see how this method is any less scientific or random than the old telephone method. If this is true, then a larger sample size is more accurate.

I can't believe I'm actually debating polling.. which I have always said is skewed because of the people who actually participate.

[Daniel]

I guess people are saying the republicans united and signed up together in order to poll, while the democrats united and decided to boycott it? Heh.


Nope. People are saying it's not a random sample. It's not a dem vs republican poll. The issue is moot because there is alot of shit to be said between now and nov.

[CrystalTears]

I disagree. People who are choosing to sign up in order to poll are more random than people who are selected from a group to call because of their demographic.

And it may not necessarily be a rep vs dem poll, however when someone states that the poor democrats are the ones being left out... well.. it does make you wonder.

[Clove]

You guys still believe that? :D

FTW (and reinforcing E's fantasy world) *runs and hides*

[Kembal]

Ergh. I can't believe anyone thinks that Zogby Interactive poll is valid.

1. Zogby Interactive had the poorest performance of all polls in the 2006 election. It predicted more competitive races than actually existed. (saying the Dems had chances for even more pickups than they actually did)

2. A Gallup poll was released on the exact same day contradicting the numbers on Hillary vs Republicans trial heats.

3. It is not a general "Democrats are not signing up" for Zogby. Obama's numbers were just fine.

I'm going to quote a blog post from Pollster.com's Charles Franklin that extends on the same arguments I'm making....they're the best source for analyzing polls and their validity I've found. If you want to look at the charts he's using for his explanation, here's the link: http://www.pollster.com/blogs/zogby_internet_poll_trial_heat.php


Zogby Internet Poll Trial Heats are Odd

A new Zogby Interactive poll, conducted using volunteers over the internet, has produced some odd results for trial heats involving Senator Clinton against all four top Republican opponents. What makes this especially odd is that the results are not equally unusual for Obama.

This poll was reported by Reuters' John Whitesides, who also reports on the Reuters sponsored polling Zogby does by conventional telephone methods. The similarities in the reports make it hard to tell, but apparently these results are not part of the Reuters-Zogby polling partnership, but are independent work by Zogby Interactive. Likewise Zogby's website posts the results without mention of who sponsored the work, so presumably Reuters did not.

The Zogby poll was conducted 11/21-26/07 with 9150 respondents who had agreed to take part in Zogby's online polling. This is not a normal random sample of the population. More on the technical issues below.

The hugely surprising result is that the Zogby poll finds Sen. Hillary Clinton losing to all four top Republicans in head-to-head trial heats. What makes that surprising is that Clinton LEADS all four of those Republicans in the trend estimates based on all other polling by between 3.8 and 11.6 points. Zogby also has Clinton losing to Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee by 5 points. There are too few Clinton-Huckabee trial heat polls from other organizations for me to compute a trend estimate for that comparison.

The chart above shows all the trial heat data from national polling and the estimated trend lines for each pairing. The data points for the new Zogby data are indicated in the charts as "Zogby Inet" in blue for Clinton and red for each Republican.

What is immediately clear is that the Zogby Clinton numbers are well below the estimated trend for Clinton in each of the four comparisons. Clinton is consistently 8-10 points below her trend estimate based on other polling.

In contrast, the Republican results are quite close to the trend estimate in most cases: Giuliani is at 43 in Zogby, with a trend of 44. Romney is 43 in Zogby, 38.3 in trend; Thompson is 44 in Zogby, 41.3 trend, and McCain is 42 Zogby, 42.7 trend. Those Republican numbers are about the kind of normal noise we see around the trend estimate, so don't seem out of line.

Why then is Clinton so far down in comparison to other polls? The Reuters story doesn't note that these results are far from other polling, and instead uses the theme that Clinton is declining to frame these Zogby results:

"The results come as other national polls show the race for the Democratic nomination tightening five weeks before the first contest in Iowa, which kicks off the state-by-state nomination battles in each party.

Some Democrats have expressed concerns about the former first lady's electability in a race against Republicans. The survey showed Clinton not performing as well as Obama and Edwards among independents and younger voters, pollster John Zogby said."

While this is certainly a theme of recent reporting, boosted by a pre-Thanksgiving ABC/WP poll showing Obama leading Clinton in Iowa, it is striking that no other poll has found recent results as far from the trend estimates as are Zogby's results and that the Reuters story fails to note that fact.

One answer to why Clinton does so badly MIGHT be that the poll has too few Democrats and thus biases its results. But if that were so, we'd expect Obama to also underperform his trend estimates. That doesn't happen, as the chart below makes clear.

The Zogby results for Obama are all quite close to his trend estimate from all polls:

Zogby has Obama at 46% vs Giuliani, while the trend puts him at 44.3. Against Romney Zogby has Obama at 46%, while trend says 46.6. Against Thompson Zogby has Obama at 47, while trend is 47.0, and against McCain Zogby has Obama at 45 while trend puts him at 43.4.

This is clearly not consistent with a general anti-Democratic bias in the Zogby Internet poll. It is also clear from the graph that the Obama pairings find Republicans doing quite close to the trend estimates as they did against Clinton.

(Trial heats against Edwards are not very common recently, so the Zogby results for him lack much polling for comparison.)

And so we are left with a puzzle: What is it about these respondents that so strongly affects Clinton support but no one else?

We can probably rule out one easy explanation: That Clinton has suddenly collapsed and Zogby is just the first to find it. The reason is internal to the Zogby result. If Clinton really has suddenly become 10 points less attractive, we'd expect all four Republicans paired against her to do BETTER than their trend estimates when facing her. But what happens is Clinton goes down and they don't do any better. That is hard to reconcile with a real change in Clinton's support. (A tortured version would say Clinton must have collapsed among Dems who now say they are undecided while refusing to move towards any of the Republicans. But that isn't usually what happens in real data when one candidate declines sharply. Usually the other moves up at least a bit, drawing not only from unhappy partisans but especially from independents who now are disenchanted with the former front-runner. So while you could make the math work with this story, it doesn't seem very well supported by the data.)

The Zogby Internet polling has a questionable track record in statewide races for Senate and Governor in 2006, where they often far over-estimated the competitiveness of races compared to conventional phone polls taken at the same time. One way to make sense of those problems turns out not to help much here. It is reasonable that the people who volunteer to take political polls over the internet are considerably more interested in politics (and likely more strongly partisan) than is a random sample of likely voters. That should be expected to lead to fewer people with "don't know" responses as better informed and more partisan respondents are likely to both know more about the candidates and to have made up their minds sooner than a proper random sample. That helps explain why Zogby's 2006 internet polls looked as they did.

But this does no good in Clinton's case. What we see is that MORE internet respondents are undecided about their vote between Clinton and four Republicans than the trend estimates based on less involved and partisan phone samples show. The Zogby undecided rates for the Clinton pairings are 20, 17, 17 and 16% (plus 17% undecided in the Huckabee comparison.) The comparable undecided rates based on the trend estimates are 8.2, 12.8, 9.0 and 10.6. That is an average undecided rate of 17.5 in Zogby vs 10.15 in the trends. Likewise the undecided rate is slightly lower for Obama pairings than it is for Clinton: 17, 13, 14, 13, and 14 for Huckabee. How could it be that a sample that is almost certainly more involved, knowledgeable and partisan can be LESS decided about Cinton, the single best known figure in the race? Again, a tortured story might be constructed, but I think a simpler explanation is that this result is not consistent within the Zogby data itself, or in comparison with outside polling.

Where does this leave us? Puzzled. If these results came from voting machines, I'd suspect that something in the ballot design or the recording mechanism caused a modest but consistent undercount of the Clinton support. The effect seems confined only to that one candidate, and not to any others, Democrats or Republicans. And there was no boost in support for the Republicans paired against Clinton. In this case, I'm similarly inclined to wonder if there is the possibility that the Zogby online survey had a glitch that caused a systematic "undervote" for Clinton. Certainly if my research assistant brought me these results, I'd want to check the software for mistakes before I published it.

Let's assume the Zogby organization has checked for any such possible mistakes or glitches and has ruled that out. (One would assume they were as surprised by the data as anyone and since their reputation is on the line, would have checked very carefully before releasing the data.) Is there any reasonable model of how candidate preferences are evolving that might explain this result, and the stability of Republicans paired against Clinton AND the stability of Obama support and that of his Republican pairings?

Without access to the raw data it is impossible to test any speculation here. But here is one possibility: Internet polls, presumably including Zogby's, use weighting to adjust for non-representativeness in their volunteer respondents. (There is a huge debate about whether this, and more sophisticated approaches, can produce generalizable population estimates with good statistical properties, but we'll leave that for another day.) Clinton has more support among women and somewhat older people. Both those groups are likely to be underrepresented in any pool of internet respondents. As a result the responses of those with these characteristics who ARE present in the sample are likely to be weighted up quite a bit to reach population proportions in the weighted sample. If the relatively few older women who are in the sample are ALSO atypical in other ways that both make them volunteer for internet surveys AND be less disposed to support Clinton than are non-internet volunteering older women, then weighting these respondents up won't properly capture Clinton's support and will lead to a systematic underestimate of her support.

That could do it, but it sounds pretty tortured to me.

I'd check the software one more time.

And based on the large outliers the Clinton results produce, I'd hold off on the Reuters headline until I saw some confirmation from other polls.

Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.

-- Charles Franklin

[Kefka]

I wouldn't put too much faith in that Zogby poll. Compared to all the others, it's way off base. It has Huckabee beating Hillary. Is that not a sign? It's an online poll that's as reliable as clicking a box on cnn.com. Not very. If it requires registration to participate, that makes it far from random. I believe the majority is just not interested enough in politics to get involved with an online poll that requires you to register.

[Daniel]

I disagree. People who are choosing to sign up in order to poll are more random than people who are selected from a group to call because of their demographic.

.

Well you're also stupid.

Isn't it about time for you to bow out of any discussion that requires more than a couple sentences of text and a little bit of knowledge, as usual?

[CrystalTears]

Spoken like a true hypocrite.

[Gan]

Where was this poll advertised?

Was it on sites prevalently read by partisans of both parties?

Obviously a Drudge only advertised poll would have a skewed sample response. However, if the poll is advertised on sites like CNN, who's to say its not representative of an adequate unbiased sample?

[Clove]

Well you're also stupid.

There's sentence one.


Isn't it about time for you to bow out of any discussion that requires more than a couple sentences of text and a little bit of knowledge, as usual?
There's sentence two.

So you'll be dropping out of the discussion, yes?

[Parkbandit]

Well you're also stupid.

Isn't it about time for you to bow out of any discussion that requires more than a couple sentences of text and a little bit of knowledge, as usual?


Or... she could start a thread to try and make someone look bad because they hurt her feelings.. only to have it blow up in her face and make her look like a little pussy.

Oh wait.. that would be you.

[Daniel]

R team to the rescue!

Good job guys. You really dropped the ball on TheE and Keller going to a concert together yesterday, but you really banded together and made a strong showing when it counts. You should be proud of yourselves.

[Gan]

R team to the rescue!

Good job guys. You really dropped the ball on TheE and Keller going to a concert together yesterday, but you really banded together and made a strong showing when it counts. You should be proud of yourselves.

Maybe you should start another thread. It worked so well for you last time.

[Clove]

R team to the rescue!


Made possible by your pointless jibes.

[Parkbandit]

R team to the rescue!

Good job guys. You really dropped the ball on TheE and Keller going to a concert together yesterday, but you really banded together and made a strong showing when it counts. You should be proud of yourselves.

The only one we tried to rescue was you.. in hopes that you wouldn't post something stupid yet again.

Clearly.. we were no match for your super stupidity though... you 'win' again.

[875000]

Maybe you should start another thread. It worked so well for you last time.

Oh, please do not have him go there.

I can just see it now. Daniel's invitations for an open discussion, followed up by personal attacks on anyone who even half-way disagrees with him. The eventual revelations that he does not know what he is talking about. His repeated demonstrations of functional illiteracy. His use of doctored quotes. And then, just when it seems like it can get any worse, the race card being played.

Why don't we just inerract with an emotionally disturbed person with severe brain damage and save ourselves the time of reading and responding to his rants?

[Clove]

Why don't we just inerract with an emotionally disturbed person with severe brain damage and save ourselves the time of reading and responding to his rants?

Leave Stan out of this. :love: Just kidding Stanley.

[Daniel]

Awww. You guys are so sweet ;)

[Gan]

Why don't we just inerract with an emotionally disturbed person with severe brain damage and save ourselves the time of reading and responding to his rants?

I thought thats what we were already doing?

:(

[ElanthianSiren]

Where was this poll advertised?

Was it on sites prevalently read by partisans of both parties?

Obviously a Drudge only advertised poll would have a skewed sample response. However, if the poll is advertised on sites like CNN, who's to say its not representative of an adequate unbiased sample?

Read the analysis; it doesn't seem that the error came from it being voluntary response in sum. It came from whatever software they used to account for the fact that it was voluntary ie they messed with the responses to account for other "factors". Unfortunately, they refused to post the raw, so nobody can know wtf they did.

I made a similar assumption earlier then read the article closer. I agree voluntary response is a great way to skew anything you get.

edit: also, my previous post, which I deleted at the time, responded to CT's concern in layman's terms, which Kefka's (I think) article also does but in more technical terms. Ie it's a wall of text that is going to be hard to decipher if you don't enjoy statistics.

Voluntary response is rarely, if ever, valid data because you end up getting rabid people responding, so you're grossly underrepresenting undecideds etc. If we assume the country is generally 30% strong rep, 30% strong lib, you can't ignore this group in the middle that's undecided. What they did in the poll was try to statistically create this midground group, resulting in wonky data by most accounts (ie no matter if you think hillary sucks, it doesn't mesh with the other data in the form of polls, so one or both are wrong).

[ElanthianSiren]

Ps. the core of Daniel's assertion about minorities in the other thread is backed with several studies in cultural anthropology. One of the most famous is Crack in Spanish Harlem by Philippe Bourgois. I began typing that whole article out for you all, but I didn't have time to finish it. It's 10 pages long.

[Daniel]

No sense in arguing ES. Minorities owe their problems to themselves going back to slavery.

If they wanted their great x20 to have jobs they wouldn't have let themselves be slaves.

This is a country of personal responsibility. Go sell that crazy shit elsewhere.

[TheEschaton]

I love how the minute I said "you shouldn't trust this polling because it's not random", PB goes into a "larger must be better and how can internet not be as random as phone???!?!?!??" Well, because almost everyone has a phone, not everyone has regular internet access. It isn't random.

Then, the minute a comprehensive, well-thought out and valid criticism of the polling was made by a pollster, they turned to insulting Daniel.

Classic.

-TheE-

[Daniel]

I love how the minute I said "you shouldn't trust this polling because it's not random", PB goes into a "larger must be better and how can internet not be as random as phone???!?!?!??" Well, because almost everyone has a phone, not everyone has regular internet access. It isn't random.

Then, the minute a comprehensive, well-thought out and valid criticism of the polling was made by a pollster, they turned to insulting Daniel.

Classic.

-TheE-

They really pwnted me and hurt my feelings too :(

[Some Rogue]

R team to the rescue!

Good job guys. You really dropped the ball on TheE and Keller going to a concert together yesterday, but you really banded together and made a strong showing when it counts. You should be proud of yourselves.

D team to the rescue!

[Latrinsorm]

HAW HAW HAW what about LE WINNING TEAM? :smug: :cool_rsvd:

[Parkbandit]

D team to the rescue!

Now now... that's not true. It's only the Republicans that would stoop to doing that. Democrats are good people who care.

:hug:

[ElanthianSiren]

No sense in arguing ES. Minorities owe their problems to themselves going back to slavery.

If they wanted their great x20 to have jobs they wouldn't have let themselves be slaves.

This is a country of personal responsibility. Go sell that crazy shit elsewhere.

If you haven't read the study and this is of interest to you, I suggest grabbing it at the library. It's pretty famous and should be in most anthropology/cultural anthropology books. Unfortunately, you can't get it online, so I couldn't paste it, nor could I get it from Ebsco at my school. When you combine it with James Gray's testimony, you can make a pretty compelling case against the absolutism of the above statements, as Gray was THE drug czar forming these policies (and now regrets the hell out of them).

Other than that, the article by Kefka discounts the idea that if the study had been done on CNN, different results would have been obtained. Another one of its main arguments is that the data was in range for all candidates as predicted by other polls, except Hillary. So the discussion of phone vs. internet is moot here. The real issue is how the software was programmed to account for undecided and moderates. In this way, it argues FOR random samples, unless you believe that every single other poll was skewed dramatically, and this is the only correct one.

[Sean of the Thread]

I read in the library that black slaves are the cause for diabetes in North America.

[875000]

I love how the minute I said "you shouldn't trust this polling because it's not random", PB goes into a "larger must be better and how can internet not be as random as phone???!?!?!??" Well, because almost everyone has a phone, not everyone has regular internet access. It isn't random.

Then, the minute a comprehensive, well-thought out and valid criticism of the polling was made by a pollster, they turned to insulting Daniel.

Classic.

-TheE-

Actually, Daniel got dogpiled due to his response to CrystalTears and general lack of intelligence and tact. With regards to the Zogby poll, and Zogby polling in general, I've always felt John borders on the "hack" territory. Normally, his polls tend to be weighted towards Democrats. It just so turns out that he did a lousy enough job with this one that Republicans finally benefited. The end result is the same though -- the poll still sucks.

All of that said, I couldn't let this gem pass, either:


I love how the minute I said "you shouldn't trust this polling because it's not random", PB goes into a "larger must be better and how can internet not be as random as phone???!?!?!??" Well, because almost everyone has a phone, not everyone has regular internet access. It isn't random.

Not everyone has a phone either. These days, many people are relying on either their cell phones as their primary form of communications, or are dropping their LAN lines entirely. I believe that the numbers fall to around 7-10% of the population have no LAN lines at all, and 20% or more use cell phones as their primary form of communication.

Why is this relevant? Federal restrictions prohibit pollers from getting cell phone numbers, so a demographic segment gets undersampled. This group certainly tends to be younger. Analyses of their income levels tend to vary in findings.

How do the pollsters deal with this? Some argue that this group is irrelevant (hardly comforting). Others admit that their sampling is biased, and then try to adjust it appropriately (where have we seen this before?). They all agree that as this trend continues (and believe you me, it is), their polls are getting less reliable.

[Daniel]

Actually, Daniel got dogpiled due to his response to CrystalTears and general lack of intelligence and tact. .

Sure sure.

[Parkbandit]

Sure sure.


Actually, he's correct. CT disagreed with your assumption, so you posted:


Well you're also stupid.

Isn't it about time for you to bow out of any discussion that requires more than a couple sentences of text and a little bit of knowledge, as usual?

Which lead to responses in kind.

I know, I know.. the Internet /= serious business to you. Perhaps that is why you suck at it so much?

[TheEschaton]

Well, CT's response was stupid. She said a self-selecting internet poll you had to register for was more random than a telephone poll that was scientifically sampled.

-TheE-

[TheEschaton]

I disagree. People who are choosing to sign up in order to poll are more random than people who are selected from a group to call because of their demographic.

And it may not necessarily be a rep vs dem poll, however when someone states that the poor democrats are the ones being left out... well.. it does make you wonder.

Yanno, just in case she edits....I bolded the part where she was stupid.

-TheE-

[CrystalTears]

I don't edit or delete after the fact, I'm not Ilvane.

If my opinion is wrong, I'd rather it explained to me like ES did, rather than being called stupid for my opinion.

I think all polls are skewed anyway, I just felt that in this day and age, internet polls would offer a wider range of people than those hand selected to call individually. I was proven wrong then. Oh well. At least I admit when I'm wrong and don't sit here and try to prove how very wrong I am.

Continue to bash me for my opinion. I don't mind if it entertains you that much to insult me. :shrug:

[Kembal]

Now that we've all figured out how Zogby polling sucks and understand what it means to have a random sample, I will return us to our regularly scheduled coverage of the Giuliani campaign imploding:

From the New York Daily News (egregious parts bolded):

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2007/12/01/2007-12-01_city_taxpayers_picked_up_tab_for_judith_-1.html


City taxpayers picked up tab for Judith Giuliani's visit to kin in Pennsylvania
BY MICHAEL SAUL and DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Saturday, December 1st 2007, 4:00 AM

In the fall of 2001, city cops chauffeured Rudy Giuliani's then-mistress, Judith Nathan, to her parents' Pennsylvania home 130 miles away on the taxpayers' dime.

Records show that city cops refueled at an ExxonMobil station down the road from Nathan's childhood home in Hazleton on Oct. 20, 2001, while Giuliani stayed behind in New York attending 9/11 funerals.

A similar receipt pops up at a different Hazleton gas station two months later, when Nathan apparently went home for a pre-Christmas visit with her parents.

The records show that - in addition to using City Hall funds to take Giuliani and Nathan to 11 secret trysts in the Hamptons, as has been previously reported - taxpayers were paying to ferry Nathan on long-distance trips without Giuliani, now a Republican contender for President.

Aides to the presidential hopeful insisted Friday that all the expenses were legitimate - although Mayor Bloomberg's gal pal, Diana Taylor, happily goes without police protection.

Neighbors from Nathan's old town said Friday that explains the burly men they remember seeing with her in the fall of 2001 when she visited her parents.

"They looked like [cops], clean-cut and well-built," recalled Madeline Kowalski, 48.

The receipts, first revealed by Politico.com and obtained by the Daily News, also show that the obscure accounts that covered the cop expenses were put to other surprising uses.

Giuliani's Community Assistance Unit doled out pricey meals, Broadway tickets - even tickets to Yankee games - to victims of the melee that followed the Puerto Rican Day Parade in 2000.

Giuliani advisers insisted that the manner in which the travel and other bills were paid - by scattering expenses across several little-known mayoral agencies - was appropriate and not an attempt to obscure anything.

"At what point do we acknowledge that this was just a cheap political hit and that the premise of the original story has been proven false?" said Giuliani adviser Anthony Carbonetti. "Nobody was trying to hide anything."

Aides dismissed questions about Nathan's security detail as old news, since it was reported in 2001 that the NYPD granted her full-time protection that year after an unspecified threat was allegedly made against her. The detail was approved by Giuliani pal Bernard Kerik.

At the time, it was not uncommon to see Nathan being chauffeured around the city in an undercover Dodge with two detectives, who sometimes even helped to walk her dog.

As for the tickets, Carbonetti said they were "a token of goodwill from the city."

The expenses were all paid with a City Hall American Express card funded with money from mayoral office units that had nothing to do with travel or security.

One document dated June 26, 2000, shows how money from five such offices - the Mayor's Office of People with Disabilities, the Community Assistance Unit, the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office, the Loft Board and the mayor's liaison to the United Nations - was used to prepay an American Express account to the tune of $60,000.

That card was in turn used to pay for many security-related costs on trips taken by Giuliani, Nathan, Giuliani's children and, until their marriage dissolved in 2001, First Lady Donna Hanover.

Carbonetti said that the document - dated four days before the end of the city fiscal year - simply showed how unused money from agencies was being used to prepay bills.

"It's fiscally responsible to anticipate predictable expenses and prepay them," he argued.

As for Hazleton, the Giulianis are buying more than gas there these days. On Nov. 1, records show, the couple purchased Nathan's childhood home from her parents for an unspecified sum.

Ok, I don't know about you guys, but I think there's better uses of a cop's time than to walk the mayor's girlfriend's dog.