A press release touting Xbox Live's partnership with Rock the Vote notes that Barack Obama has a 12% edge over John McCain among participants in an XBL poll. 100,000 users took part, which, according to the press release, makes the XBL sample larger than Gallup, NBC and CNN combined. Of course, as Giant Bomb notes:
...they aren't pretending that it's actual science, because there are so many holes in this poll that it's impossible to take it as anything other than sort-of interesting. For example, as someone who has more than one Xbox Live gold account, I probably could have voted twice...
Still, it is a fascinating use of what started out a few years back as a space designed strictly for online gaming.
As far as the results, Obama's big lead is not especially surprising, given that XBL users likely skew significantly younger than the population as a whole. Here are the numbers:
- Obama \ Biden: 43%
- McCain \ Palin: 31%
- Undecided: 13%
- Other: 13%
Of more value than the polling is the impressive level of political engagement engendered by the XBL / Rock the Vote partnership. As the press release points out:
In its first two weeks of the program, more than 55,000 voter registration forms were downloaded through Xbox LIVE and xbox.com. Additionally, videos from the recent Democratic and Republican conventions were downloaded nearly 25,000 times.
To-date, the Xbox LIVE community has downloaded more than 350,000 pieces of program-specific content, ranging from candidate gamerpics to videos and Rock the Vote logos. That’s nearly five times the amount of people present at Barack Obama’s acceptance speech during the Democratic Convention in Denver.
Comments
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
You can not vote on the internet, people! Imagine the hell that would be!
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Yeah, people already cheat the poll system, think about the internet poll system with how retared our government is. They cant even get the electronic voting to work out well. Come ON!!! I can make a flash program to do all of the voting, why? because it is easy as hell. Tell it to print, and send info to database. Then the database be uploaded to a thumb drive password protected, and fully 512 encrypted (overkill, but hell), then have them bring that to a main office where they plug it into the computer there to sent the numbers to the main collection center, wherever the hell that is, as well as call the place. All uneditable to anyone other than the initial voter when voting. Have that hub before the main collection place print off everything with 3pt font with a super high quality printer, then the final place print off everything with 1pt font with a even better quality printer.
Full paper trail, full electronic trail, and have the initial machines everyone voted on save all of the votes for 6 months or until deleted by an official, which can only happen 4 months after voting.
Sadly, all of that would only take a week to program the main parts of it at most, and the encrytpion part would take the longest if you made it very secure, and make it so there are reader programs, but not editing programs....
It is all possible... Online is unfair to certain groups of people though, if you had both, someone would do dirty tricks to screw it up...
Okay, I am on a sugar high right now...
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Aside from the multiple account issue, I think a bigger issue is that only 2 candidates were named out of all possible (registered?) contenders. Seriously, is it only 2 guys?
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Depends on the state. Many states have candidates from the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party and/or the Green Party. If you live in Oklahoma, you are screwed though as we don't allow third parties on our ballot.
E. Zachary Knight
http://www.editorialgames.com
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
MySpace Page: http://www.myspace.com/okceca
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1325674091
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Wow, for the first time I agree with a position of the Oklahoma government. Third parties break our stupid pick-one voting system. Either they should be removed from the ballot, or the system should be revamped to accommodate them, but just leaving it alone and pretending that the current system reflects the will of the people is silly.
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
That's a big problem I think in America. In Michigan, if I vote for McCain, I have to vote for Palin also. I just see too many problems with today's system.
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Um it's like that everywhere. Palin is the running mate for McCain she's on the ballot with him one way or another Oo you don't vote on the Vice-President on a canditite gets.
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
If I want to vote for McCain, but not for Palin, I should be able to. That's what I was getting at. There should be a "President" box and a "Vice Pres" box, each with it's own candidates. I don't wanna be commited to a vp just because of the President I vote for.
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Please read any 11th grade history textbook before you make comments like this. It's like that for a reason. It used to be like that, but vice presidents that hated the presidents guts were elected, and one kept undoing the work of and sabotoging the other. People like to bitch about the system, but most of the practices we have are their because the alternatives were tried, and they didn't work.
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Yeah now Congress has taken over the role of battling the President's wishes.
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Going back to his 11th grade history textbook, that's congress's job.
Re: Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll
Of course, because Palin is his running mate O.o