Survey USA polls are preferred by TV news for one reason -- they are inexpensive. And they are inexpensive because of their unconventional methodology -- using computer-automated phone calls rather than live human callers.
SUSA is highly controversial in the polling industry, obviously. Once upon a time I shared the contempt for SUSA, but after seing their performance in 2002, I changed my mind. Now, a legitimate researcher has objective proof that SUSA is no less effective than more "legitimate" pollsters (link is PDF).
The other fairly strong finding here is that despite the criticism to which they were subjected, Zogby International and SurveyUSA performed at roughly the same level of other nonpartisan polling organizationns in 2002, with Zogby performing a bit below average and SurveyUSA a bit above it. Given the level of suspicion in which many survey researchers hold the latter firm, this finding may be of particular importance. Clearly SurveyUSA polls should be included in any analysis of election polls.
To make this clear -- Zogby performed worse than the average (albeit slightly), while SurveyUSA did better than average. SUSA is a legit polling outfit.
Which leads to a crazy idea of mine. No one is polling the ND caucuses, yet they will play a role in chosing our nominee (with an early Feb. 3 date). I have put in an inquiry into SUSA to get a quote on polling the race. Would you guys be interested in seing a dKos poll of ND? And if so, would you help fund it? (I'd be happy to put some significant personal coin into making the poll happen.)
If the interest is there, I'll report back with the quote and see if it's something we'd want to pursue.