Quote:
Originally Posted by Rerun
And what if polling results are completely out of wack from reality? Polls can be skewed to get the result you want.
At least if a person utters a lie you can rebut it... how do you do that to a poll. My faith in polling is currently at an all time low... for many of the reasons brought up in this thread.
Many voters however, take poll results as the gospel truth.... and vote accordingly.... to the detriment of some parties that don't deserve it and vice versa.
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Here's something that should restore your faith. American polls were given a rough ride this last election cycle. Response rates were at historic lows, in some cases lower than 10% (though they crept higher as election day neared). The bulk of pollsters were using robo-calls to land-lines only, for cost reasons. Pollsters were also modeling the electorate according to demographics, which some people thought was apt to skew the result toward democrats.
But in the end... the polls mostly got it right, especially at the state level. Non-cell-phone polls were on balance slightly biased toward republicans, but the effect was in most cases modest. A few pollsters had
really bad results (Gallup, Rasmussen, Gravis and Mason-Dixon come to mind) but for the most part the polls did a very good job of handicapping the race--and the evidence (that Obama was winning) was there for anyone who cared to see it.
I don't buy that polls are very often "skewed," at least not deliberately. Nor do I buy that there are very many people who take them as gospel and "vote accordingly," whatever that would mean.
As for detriment to parties... sometimes the truth hurts. Right now I'm guessing Chris Turner would like to see a little less polling. That's just how the cookie crumbles.