LOTS of talk about polls since the RNC bounce went so high so I thought I'd tie up a few tidbits I learned in the last week in a brief diary to share. In short - it's not as bad as some will say.
More below ...
The first thing I learned is that poll results are calculated, not just counted. That is to say if three people are polled, and 2 vote for A and 1 votes for B, the results of the poll may be 80-20 instead of 66-33. Or even 50-50. Why is this? Pollsters weight the results to reflect the known demographics. That is, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans so a small random sample gets weighted to reflect this. The math is message. Read more about a CBS poll's weighting at CBS 42-42 poll is BOGUS! (Yes, I have proof!) by AxmxZ
Because of this, and because of the tremendous effort we are placing in registering voters, the polls will under estimate Democratic turn out (yes polls are estimates based on estimates - or as I like to call them a 'second order WAG').
"So polls are imperfect, why all the attention on them?" Well they are the only bell weather we've got. Plus they are kind of like the big scoreboard at the Game so there is that element of excitement. BUT to make decisions based upon the polling numbers is fallacy. They are not decision making tools! Who wants to base a critical campaign decision on some other guy's mathematical estimates using such small samples? No one! Not even Bush!
They are fingers in the wind and knowing the problems with them actual can make them more useful and valuable.
Now, here's the two sites I keep an eye now:
* David Leip's Atlas of American Politics aggregates a number of polls, makes the results look pretty and (keep this in mind before you panic) uses RED for Democrat.
* Electoral-Vote.com has poll data available for the number hungry.
Finally, I think the most important number of all to watch state-by-state is the total number of valid registered voters. As the stream of news coming out of Ohio relays, the next step after registering voters and before GOTV efforts is to verification of current Democrat registered voters. Every Democrat must validate their registration to thwart the shenanigans happening in Ohio and potentially elsewhere.
That's it for this diary for today. Please keep in mind that the numbers are cooked, don't take them too seriously, and please share below any interesting polling sites you have in your list of must reads with me below.
Don't forget to vote!