Clinton Urling versus Vishnu Bisram: predictions in the US elections

Nov 11, 2008 Letters

Dear Editor,
From the beginning of the American Presidential race, the positions of Vishnu Bisram, a self-described pollster, and Clinton Urling, a private businessman, were at opposing ends of the opinion continuum.

From the very inception, Urling opined that Obama would not only win the Democratic primary, but would go on to win the Presidential Elections.

Bisram, meanwhile, clearly carrying a torch for Hillary Clinton, backed her for the primary, and presented his interpretation of polls to support his position.

In one of Bisram’s letters, he opined that African- Americans had to be careful of appearing to be voting for race in their support of Obama.

This comment completely ignored the fact that, until Obama won the Iowa Primary, Hilary Clinton was being favoured by most prominent Congressional African-Americans, including Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel, and celebrated Civil Rights activist and Georgia Congressional Representative John Lewis.

In addition, a feature that is always overlooked, either intentionally or carelessly, by external analysts opining on African-Americans’ voting patterns, is the fact that many whites are voted into office over their black political competitors in districts and environs that are predominantly African-American.

After Obama won the vote to be the Democratic Party’s Presidential Candidate in the general elections, Bisram’s predictions were that the race was going to be a nail-biter. He presented and interpreted polls to show that McCain was hot on Obama’s heels, and at times was even in front of him.

He opined that most Guyanese-Americans would not vote for Obama, perhaps using the pulse of his neighbourhood for these conclusions.

However, if one were to sample the blogs from which a cross-section of Guyanese voiced their opinions, it was clearly apparent that most of them were in fact rooting for Barack Obama.

Clinton Urling maintained his position that Obama would win comfortably, while taking issue with the poll figures being presented by Bisram.

In their last letters expressing an opinion on how the vote was going to turn out, Bisram opined that it would be a squeaker in favour of Obama, while Urling boldly and unabashedly countered that it would be an Obama landslide victory. In the final tally so far, Barack Obama has secured 364 electoral votes to John McCain’s 163.

In terms of the popular vote, Obama had 64, 431, 955, or 53% of the votes cast in the Presidential elections. John McCain had obtained 57, 434, 084 or 46% of the votes cast.

Barack Obama had more than double the electoral votes secured by McCain, and had won just under 7 million more of the popular votes cast in the presidential race. A landslide by any other name would look just the same.

In other words, Clinton Urling was 100% correct in his predictions on how the elections would turn out, and Vishnu Bisram was 0%.

Since Bisram, according to his assertions, was doing polling and mathematical configurations throughout the campaign, one would have expected him to be more accurate than Urling in the prediction department.

I am deducing that Urling was merely studying the trends in the campaigns and forming his opinions based on what struck him as reasonable.

Perhaps Bisram was subjectively over-compensating for some factor or variable, or maybe he was just overlooking or ignoring them.

Whatever the reason for a private individual mostly resident in Guyana being able to more accurately predict the outcome of American polls than a professional pollster mostly resident in the US, the fact that he did is as amazing to me as Obama’s Presidential victory.

Maybe it is time for Bisram to fall on his polling sword and turn over all his equipment and accoutrements to Urling.

I mean, imagine incurring a cost for the information he was providing, and in the end discovering that it was way off kilter.
Robin Williams

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