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Fresh Paint
Friday, September 17, 2004
 
Polling Tricks
Was about to leave the library when I found this by way of Atrios regarding the recently insane Gallup polls:

The Left Coaster: Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe All Of Theirs
Because the Gallup Poll, despite its reputation, assumes that this November 40% of those turning out to vote will be Republicans, and only 33% will be Democrat. You read that correctly. I asked Gallup, who have been very courteous to my requests, to send me this morning their sample breakdowns by party identification for both their likely and registered voter samples they use in these national and I suspect their state polls.
...
So the Democrats have been 39% of the voting populace in both 1996 and 2000, and the GOP has not been higher than 35% in either of those elections. Yet Gallup trumpets a poll that used a sample that shows a GOP bias of 40% amongst likely voters and 38% amongst registered voters, with a Democratic portion of the sample down to levels they haven’t been at since a strong three-way race in 1992?
But as I say, if it makes us dems go nuts and take heroic measures to get out the vote, Gallup (and/or Karl Rove) is doing us a favor.

But if it gets us depressed so that we'll just slump back and say, "It's useless! They've already won!", then not.


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