Plumping the website polls

Plumping the website polls
By Dan Hilborn, Burnaby Now assistant editor
Published Jan. 22, 2003

Boy, did we ever hit a nerve - or, at the very least, a political machine.
A record amount of traffic has been recorded on the Burnaby NOW's Web site ever since we posted an online poll about the premier's drinking and driving debacle.
As of Monday morning, a total of 319 people had responded to our online questionnaire at the Web site burnabynow.com. That's almost four times more than the average response to our polls.
The question, 'Do yo- accept Premier Gordon Campbell's apology after he was charged with impaired driving in Hawaii?' had elicited 213 'yes' answers and 106 'no' responses by Monday morning.
The question is scheduled to remain posted until some time tomorrow, Jan. 23.
Typically no more than 75 readers respond to our average online poll, said Chris Johnson, Web master for Lower Mainland Publishing Ltd., a division of CanWest Global and the parent company of the Burnaby NOW.
"It appears that people are exercising their political will," Johnson said Monday morning. "Typically, any time yo- get more than 100 responses, that is a large number for any newspaper. Even the Vancouver Courier gets average results of 50 to 70 responses on a question.
"So what this does is show you can drive traffic to your Web site with a good question."
Johnson also noted the poll results are completely unscientific and can easily be skewed by a few determined computer users.
"All you have to do is get a bunch of friends online and pound it out," Johnson said.
"There are also other ways to fudge the polls, but I'd prefer not to get into that."
Johnson said the main purpose of the online polls is to allow people to express an opinion and to provide some "interactivity" with the Web site users.
Region-wide, the poll results, as of Monday morning, were as follows:
- The Chilliwack Times asked 'Should Premier Gordon Campbell resign?' and received 35 'yes' responses and 109 saying 'no.'
- The Abbotsford Times asked 'Do you wish the whole issue of the premier's drunk-driving arrest would just go away?' and received 107 'yes' to 32 'no'.
- The Langley Advance-News asked, 'Under the circumstances, if you were Gordon Campbell, would you resign as premier?' and got 53 'yes' responses and 107 'no.'
- The NOW Community newspaper in Surrey asked 'Do yo- think Gordon Campbell should step down as premier?' and got 51 'yes' answers to 102 'no'.
But at least two other Van Net Web sites had substantially different results.
- The Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Times asked 'Should Premier Gordon Campbell resign?' and had a near split with 232 'yes' responses and 251 'no.'
- The Royal City Record newspaper in New Westminster asked 'Are you satisfied with Premier Gordon Campbell's apology after he was charged with drunk driving while on vacation in Hawaii?' and received exactly 200 'yes' and 182 'no' responses.
Chris Campbell, editor of the Maple Ridge newspaper, said the pro-premier side was leading substantially prior to Monday morning, when 220 yes votes were recorded in a few hours.
"I'm not even going to publish those," said Campbell (no relation to the premier), who typically publishes the results of the online poll in the subsequent hard copy edition of the newspaper.
"What I'm going to do instead is outline what happened and say how suspicious this is.
"Up until now the results have been slowly trickling in, but this is just absurd."
Johnson said he was able to trace much of the activity on the eight affected LMPL Web sites to "a couple of users" on the Shaw@home and telus.net servers.
For those keeping track, the final results of all eight Web polls combined showed 1089 (61 per cent) readers voting in support of the premier, with 691 (38 per cent) opposed.