Where is it written that one has to go with the polls?

Nov 14, 2008 Letters

Dear Editor,
I respond to the author writing under the name of Kyian Jones’ letter that appeared in Kaieteur News of November 12, 2008, under the caption, “Williams has incorrectly criticised Bisram”.
The writer’s reference of Clinton Urling as my friend (I have never met Clinton Urling, although I was an enthusiastic patron to his fathers soup dispensary in Tiger Bay back in the day), is particularly instructive for me, and provides an image of Jones thinking that has become quite familiar. But rather than boring anyone with a layman’s analysis of the psyche of these infamous defenders of the indefensible, let me simply respond to a couple of things he or she said.
Jones asserts that quote, “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” (end quote). As I recall, I stated in my letter that Urling used his commonsense assessment of the American Electorate’s thinking to come to his conclusions, using words to that effect.
Surely anyone with a basic public school understanding of English would grasp that my use of the term “prediction” in that context simply related to Urling foretelling the outcome of an event based on his observations and experiences. I mean like “predicting” the winner of a race based on your assessment of the competing horses or athletes. Jones’ attempt to obfuscate the obvious by marrying my thoughts with university math is clearly a puerile inverse proportional gambit. “As Williams go down Bisram will go up, and we will get the fishes all right”. Please!!!
Jones writes, quote, “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”. Tell me please, what the dickens is wrong with that? He or she goes on to assert that unless someone can show that the polls were incorrectly conducted they have to go with the polls. That is rubbish. If John McCain went with the polls he would have packed up his political tent and gone home to Arizona very early in the contest. Gut feeling, intuition, the ability to understand the way individuals and groups will go or behave through the emotional agency of empathy have always been as influential, if not more so, on people’s opinions and views as polls. Calling it right without a background claim of interviews or conversations with 500 people does not make it less right.
I am not here to defend Clinton Urling. Frankly I do not know the man. As far as I can tell he is more than capable of performing that function for himself. He was incidental to this issue. If the person at logger heads with Bisram over the just concluded elections was Emile Mervin or Robert Persaud, their names would have been where Urling’s was in my letter.
I hope Urling is not offended by the fact that he has become a semi subject of this exchange, and I apologise in advance if that is so. At the same time, I will not retract on the basic content of my initial letter. Bisram is a frequent contributor to the letter columns where he expresses his subjective views on political and other issues relative to Guyana and the US.
He has never produced evidence of the populations he samples for his polls, despite calls by many for him to do so. You cannot expect to be a source of subjective output in the letter columns and then demand people follow scientific guidelines and rules when critiquing your opinion.
If Vishnu Bisram wishes to have a different standard for himself than that which is accorded every other Venter in the independent press, then he should set a different standard than every other Venter in these periodicals. C’mon man, I do not pay homage to sacred cows when it comes to a little humour, or searing critique. I take it, and I dish it out. Live with it man, live with it!!!!
Robin Williams

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