Williams has incorrectly criticized Bisram

Nov 12, 2008 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Robin Williams praises his friend Clinton Urling’s, “correct” predictions for the U.S Presidential elections in your letter section on November 11 while mocking Vishnu Bisram, the noted Guyanese pollster.
I think Williams should have written the reverse. The term “prediction” as in a poll cannot be used to describe Urling’s expected outcome of the U.S presidential election. Anyone with a basic university math education would know that.  I am surprised Robin Williams does not.
Predictions of an election are not based on gut feelings but on facts and figures. Pollsters like Bisram use a “scientific methodology” to make a prediction or a projection of the outcome.  This projection is not static but is dynamic, changing with time, issues, conditions, etc., as had happened throughout the election campaign.
Urling concluded that Obama would win the Democratic primary and the nomination since last year when all the opinion polls at the time said Hillary Clinton was a shoo in.  Urling did not conduct a poll and did not rely on polls to form a “conclusion”. He reacted out of a gut feeling of what he felt would happen.
Anyone can say he or she thinks Obama or Clinton or Biden or Edwards will win the nomination.  But what is the basis of the conclusion? It must be based on some stats or reasonable explanation to negate the polls’s findings.  Urling did not provide any hard evidence to back his conclusion. Williams himself penned that all the polls showed that Clinton would win the primary and the nomination, and said Bisram relied on the polls to form his prediction.
So what was Bisram supposed to write? That Obama would win when the polls said Clinton would win? Unless someone can show that the polls were incorrectly conducted, one has to go with the polls. So Bisram’s assessment of the Democratic nomination was far more superior than Urling’s, as it was based on science not on feeling.
I recall Bisram claiming that he polled Guyanese and Caribbean Americans and they said they preferred Clinton over Obama. NY polls also showed Clinton way ahead and indeed Clinton won NY. Penning what the polls say is not being “a torch bearer” of the leader (Clinton) of the polls.
That is being professional and unbiased and we should respect the writer (Bisram in this case) for his honesty, something Williams is lacking when he quotes Bisram as shown below.
Williams seems to be ignorant about the meaning of polls. He made reference to what Bisram wrote right after Obama won the Democratic nomination and measures it with the actual election results. Poll numbers change regularly.
Before Obama’s nomination, the race was a dead heat.  After Obama’s nomination, Obama took the lead.  I recall Bisram writing that the race would be closer than what the polls gave Obama (a 5% lead).  After McCain was nominated at the Republican convention, he surpassed Obama by about 7%. I remember reading a letter in Kaieteur News from Bisram saying Obama would bounce back and the election would go down to the wire. When the American economy began to slump and the stock market declined, Bisram penned Obama would take the lead.
When all the polls said Obama was way ahead and in some cases by double digits, Bisram said the election would be closer. When polls said Obama would win by between 11 and 14%, Bisram said McCain would get 46%. When the polls said Obama was way ahead in all the swing states, Bisram said they would be closer.  Also, in the days before the elections, Bisram penned that Obama was heading for a landslide.  In the Chronicle on election day, Bisram wrote that a McCain upset was impossible and that Obama would win by a landslide providing electoral vote numbers which measures up against the actual results.
In looking at the actual election figures, McCain got 46% of the popular votes, which is what Bisram projected. All except two swing states were close as assessed by Bisram. So Bisram was almost right.
As Williams penned, Urling’s conclusion (that is not a prediction) is not based on data but he got it right whereas Bisram’s prediction is based on data and he got it wrong. I don’t agree with Williams that Bisram got it wrong. He got it right, more right than most of the pollsters who were way off in their prediction. Instead of being driven by a determination to critique Bisram, and incorrectly criticizing him, Williams would come across as objective were he to also offer some positive compliments to the man’s work. Finally, Williams also need to understand the difference between a prediction based on science and math and one based on “feelings”.
Kyian Jones

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