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Smartphone Marketing Company's Poll "Reveals" Smartphone Users are Key Voting Bloc

A story headlined "Poll: iPhone users back Obama" is currently the third 'Most Read' article on Politico, and it reports on a worthless online survey that "reveals" that smart phone users prefer the president to Mitt Romney. By huge margins, in fact...

Election season is starting to hit fever pitch, and that means media commentators are desperately pouncing on absurd tidbits in a bid to offer more insight into the race. The newest nugget? A sham poll that claims smartphone users are a distinct and important voting bloc that Obama and Romney must seek to woo.

A story headlined Poll: iPhone users back Obama is currently the third ‘Most Read’ article on Politico, and it reports on a hard-hitting worthless online survey that “reveals” that smart phone users prefer the president to Mitt Romney. By huge margins, in fact! The story is everywhere — smartphone users go for Obama!

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Here we go: “You've heard about ‘soccer moms’ or ‘NASCAR dads.’ Now meet the latest voting bloc: iPhone and Android users.” [!] A Harris Interactive survey on behalf of technology marketing firm Velti found that 49 percent of iPhone and Android owners plan to support President Barack Obama in November's election, compared with just 31 percent for Mitt Romney." Also, this: “A whopping 97 percent of anticipated Obama voters were either iPhone or Android users, compared with 63 percent for Romney voters.”

There’s so much B.S. being peddled here we’re gonna have to take this thing step by step. First, online polls are notorious for being giant piles of misleading bunk. They’re exceptionally easy to manipulate. They are thoroughly unscientific and “data” they gather is often viewed as unreliable by respected pollsters.

Case in point, this “fact”: “A whopping 97 percent of anticipated Obama voters were either iPhone or Android users.”

Wow! That’s almost every single anticipated Obama voter in existence! Obama voters are truly hip and with it and on the cutting edge and Republicans are probably still using dusty old typewriters and messenger pigeons!

Unfortunately, that “whopping” statistic can’t possibly square with reality. As of March this year, only 46% of Americans owned smart phones, according to a Pew study. The last Gallup tracking poll puts Obama’s national support at 48% to Romney’s 43%—which would mean that every single smart phone user is planning on voting for Obama, and next to none are opting for Romney. But, uh, 63% of Romney’s voters use smart phones. That indicates that there are millions and millions of voters whose preferences this poll fails to reflect—and common sense supports this position. There’s just no way that 97 out of every 100 Obama votes owns a smart phone. It doesn’t add up.

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So why might we get these silly results that over-inflate the importance of “smart phone users” in electoral politics? Let’s revisit the lede of the Politico story again: “A Harris Interactive survey on behalf of technology marketing firm Velti…” Oh. The study appeared because a “technology marketing firm” wants some sweet SuperPAC cash, that’s why! If Velti can convince the multibillion dollar campaigns that ‘smart phone users’ are actually a voting bloc then they stand to get super-ass rich—those cash-oozing campaigns will need somebody with the proper expertise to help them market their platforms to that unique and influential “smart phone user voting bloc.” Velti might just be up for the job!

Seriously, strap on a life-preserver before you wade through this BS: "The results of this survey demonstrate that the smartphone market is becoming a whole new demographic that candidates must take into consideration when building a comprehensive campaign strategy," Velta CMO Krishna Subramanian said. "Clearly, mobile advertising is emerging as an influential medium and a distinct audience."

Clearly, you are full of techno-crap. Smartphone users are not a “whole new demographic.” They are ordinary people whose phones have Google Maps. There is no magical ideological shift that occurs when you purchase an iPhone, no matter how badly Apple would like you to believe you are saving the world by doing so. It is a neat gadget that can get you more of the same information you were getting before in a more convenient fashion. Period. My conservative grandfather has a smartphone and so does my independent-leaning mom. And they are most certainly not suddenly now part of some independently defined clique whose voting preferences have transformed since they walked out of Best Buy with a smartphone. Please.

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What’s even more depressing is that this will probably work. Some harried earnest and wide-eyed staffer has already forwarded the Politico to the campaign crew, and there’s probably a circle of advisers already hunched around a laptop, crunching numbers. Someone has told Mitt Romney to include his shiny new Siri-equipped iPhone 4S in more of his photo ops. All because some technology marketing firm sponsored a crap poll and forwarded the results to some overworked reporter at Politico. And so the internet has yet again helped someone buy “facts” and spread them around with magnificent ease.

Fittingly, when I Googled queries like ‘“reliability online polls Harris Interactive” (who managed the poll for Velti), the top link belonged to an official, unbiased-looking site called ’The Polling Report,’ and the top story was (and likely always is) The Case for Online Polls. The author of the article?

Humphrey Taylor, the chairman for Harris Interactive. Round and round we go.

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