I had an interesting discussion with my brother last night about how politicians deal with polls. He works in politics, but he has a background in physics(BS in physics & BA in poli sci), so he has a pretty good understanding of the math behind polls. Anyways, he said that the conversations on blogs about polls showed a much deeper understanding than the conversations that happened amongst the professionals where he works.
He basically said that where the blogs concentrate on looking at the internals of polls and gleaning their own understanding, political professionals basically take pollsters reading of the polls at face value. His actual words were something like "Please Mr. Pollster, interpret the word of god for me so I can craft my message accordingly." Anyways, I pointed out that we bloggers were much more likely to be geeks and therefore naturally gravitate towards the numbers in polling. At least, I know I am. (BS in computer science, programmer by trade) Whereas, politcos, and journalists for that matter, are much more likely to come from an arts background. Am I wrong about this?