For the over 45-50 crowd---when did 5+ polls per day become common??

[bobbieinok]

In the 40s, 50s, 60s weren't there just a few in the month before the election?

And then newspapers started doing polls.

And now there are so many......aren't they essentially meaningless?

[tigereye]

1. past ten years or so?

I think they are so frequent and based on such small increments of opinions, that they are basically useless to those other than the people who commissioned them. Plus the margin of error...

All politics all the time is so bizarre, esp with the election still many months away.

[papau]

2. Before 9/15 they are indeed less meaningful - but the July polls do

correlate fairly well to the Nov final tally.

But July polls did not agree with final a few times - so there is no "rule of thumb" that says ahead in July is equal to a win.

I can not recall more than a few polls in a season prior to the 90's!

But then in the 40's I did not care - and my memory is not as good as it once was!

:-)

[WI_DEM]

3. polling in the last twenty years have taken the place of real journalism

instead of going out in the neighborhoods and talking to voters too many journalists depend on pollsters to their work. I remember when the major pollsters were Harris, Gallup, Roper and their polls were released after the conventions, in mid Sept, mid Oct, and just before the election. It was a simpler time but today we just live in simple times.

[Warpy]

4. The number seem to be inversely proportional to their reliability

As time goes on, more and more polling outfits pop up, while advances in techology have made the usual method of polling, by telephone, pretty much useless. People with cell phones, answering machines, call waiting, caller ID, and voice mail are not going to be polled. That leaves a sample of folks who have none of the new technology and who are going to answer the phone when it rings, meaning the sample will be predominately elderly and/or rural.

Either they'll have to find a more reliable methodology, such as sending people out on foot to malls and discount stores and supermarkets (in which case, the sample will be predominately female), or they'll have to start adjusting their results to compensate for the decidedly conservative bias of the only sample they can reach.

Then again, keeping the Bush team overconfident might be a good thing.

[KurtNYC]

5. Polls = propaganda scorecard

They try to brainwash us all then they take a poll to see how much more they need to brainwash us. I think that's why you see so many polls where they ask if you believe that somnething which is already a proven fact is not true eg. "Will WMD be found in Iraq?" "Is there a connection between Osama and Saddam?"

And they do polls where the options are all slanted toward their guy "Is Bush a 'strong leader'?" "Is Bush decisive?" In their world 'strong leader' (as in semi-dictator) is implied to be a good thing.

[rlev1223]

6. oldsters and polling

Glad to see there are so many of us greybeards here, 45-50. I understand with current trends in medicine, some might make 55 or even 60.

Polls have proliferated in part for the same reason as all trivial news- the insatiable media maw. The results of each poll are disseminated within a day everywhere around the world. "Nothing to report" is
not allowed, so new polls are commissioned constantly by the media. Some are reliable as horserace snapshots...but nothing this far out can accout for events.(The self-selecting internet or call-in polls are basically worthless except in the broadest sense. I saw a poll on CNBC -- a call-in about the gay marriage amendment. 60 ot 70% were against it, which is pretty overwhelming for an essentially conservative news station audience.)

In addition there are push polls by the candidates, which serve only to provide public talking points, and their more sophisticated localized private polls, the results of which which you can see reflected in their regional ads as soon as the next day.

With all of this, I have never been polled except by companies who want my opinion on upcoming movie titles.