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They are no longer providing the distribution of Democrats/Indinendents/Republicans polled. In the past they have oversampled Democrats and when they included the party identification information they were criticized for the disproportionate sampling. I guess hiding the sampling data is easier than making an honest poll. Nice.
Quinnipiac, Gallup, and Rasmussen. Those are the only polls that I give credence to. I have far too much skepticism towards media-driven polls considering the great lengths Big Media will go to protect Barack Obama.
Never trust a poll that doesn't have transparent methodology.
As such, I trust Gallup and other major polling sources whom make their living by taking honest polls.
The media makes their money by attracting viewers and as such there is sometimes money to be made in pandering to certain segments of society.
Not to mention that newspapers over the past 20 years have slashed budgets and their quality especially with regards to technical topics is *pathetic*. They probably have some 19yo intern calling up their friends. (Only 1/2 joking)
I don't have a subscription to Rassmusen but MOST of the polls have Obama around +8 over Santorum. The NBC\WSJ and Rasmussen polls may just be due to sampling error.....again, that's why you need transparent methodology, sample size, error margin and so forth.
Even the Error margins like +/-7pts etc. are based upon statistical ASSUMPTIONS and are generally to some arbitrary 95% confidence interval.
So, for example the Rasmussen poll being 9pts *off* most of the others may just be random variation.
Journalists (and most political posters) should be kept away from statistics. Like giving a chimp a live grenade. Eventually they will understand it just enough to cause trouble.
WaPo/ABC has finally released the sampling for their polls conducted over teh last couple of months. It is no winder they hid the sampling as long as they did.
Quote:
After hiding the partisan composition numbers for the last two months, today’s poll includes that data from the last three presidential polls. Let’s take a look at the D/R/I series, keeping in mind that the D/R/I from the 2010 midterm elections was 35/35/30:
________D/R/I
March: 31/27/36
February: 34/23/37
January: 32/25/36
The February poll from which the WaPo/ABC series derived its previous Obama approval numbers gave Democrats an 11-point edge and undersampled Republicans by 12 points in relation to their 2010 turnout. This survey has a difference of seven points in the gap.
Never trust a poll that doesn't have transparent methodology.
As such, I trust Gallup and other major polling sources whom make their living by taking honest polls.
The media makes their money by attracting viewers and as such there is sometimes money to be made in pandering to certain segments of society.
Not to mention that newspapers over the past 20 years have slashed budgets and their quality especially with regards to technical topics is *pathetic*. They probably have some 19yo intern calling up their friends. (Only 1/2 joking)
Knowing how polls are done, having access to data, financial motivations and revolving door connections seems very important. "Trust" should vary in regard to these issues.
I would say this is very important. Glad to see someone else bring this up. Some people want to paint this as a "conspiracy" or dismiss it, when it is in fact, common sense.
1) It is unfair of you to compare polls taken at different times. The public is very fickle and opinion sways back and forth. You didn't prove that Rasmussen is a poor poll by your 3 stats, you only proved that you do not understand polling. The dates really aren't close - I am surprised that you didn't notice this as you skipped through the polls jumping polls taken closer to the Rasmussen one. Were you being deceitful in doing that?
2) Also all polls have outliers from time to time. You could cherry pick these to prove any polling agency is bad under the sun. Sometimes Rasmussen gives the Democrats the biggest edge.
3) The NBC poll didn't report how many people they polled and that 15% should be taken thrown out in preference to polls that released their sampling size. (plus it was about 2 weeks before the Rasmussen that you compare it to).
4) Yes...Obama should beat Santorum.
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(Only 1/2 joking)
