What do you call it when a pollster floods us with misleading & inaccurate polls?

[Jackpine Radical]

The Gish Gallup.

[oldhippydude]

1. I'm jelouse.... great observation

[Cicada]

3. We call it sad - Gallup was so great for so long

I really can't understand where they went wrong i 2010 ad apparetlt this year also. They are finding more Republicans than any other pollster and earlier this year found fewer non-whites than indicated by the census. Andrew Kohut of Pew used to head Gallup and if you read their statements of methods Pew and Gallup seem to use about identical methods. Both spend a ton on polls - $60,000 to $100,000 each. Yet Pew skews a dit Dem and Gallup skews way right lately. It is a great mystery.

[blm]

2. well played....

Still sharp as ever, JackP

[Spike89]

4. That's a push poll

and push polls are not valid for gauging/determining voter preferences. They are useful, when done well, but never for finding out what the voter thinks. They are useful only for trying to tell the voter what to think. I don't like them because I find them condscending and sleazy (pretending to be what they are not).

A typical push poll asks a real, valid question. "Are you intending to vote for Barack Obama?" or better yet, "Who are you intending to vote for?" If you say you are voting for Obama, they branch into the script for that answer, a different script for Romney. This is where it becomes political. Depending on the group doing the poll, they might say "Were you aware that Obama eats kittens?" or "If you found out Romney kills puppies for fun, would you reconsider?"

OK, a little hyperbole, but I have heard extremely one-sided follow ups "Did you know that Obamacare will reduce medicare for our elderly?" is an actual paraphrase of one a friend heard last week.