WP polling director: Why the polls suck

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A very long analysis of polling and polling methods:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3735-2004Oct27.html

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As the director of polling for The Washington Post, I join my fellow pollsters in the hospitality rooms at professional meetings to drink cheap wine and listen as they talk nervously about the present and agonize about the future:

Two consecutive Election Day debacles have shaken public confidence in exit polls, once viewed as the crown jewel of political surveys.

Cell phones, Caller ID and increasingly elaborate call screening technologies make it harder than ever to reach a random sample of Americans. Prompted by the popularity of do-not-call lists, a few state legislatures are considering laws that would lump pollsters in with telemarketers and bar them from calling people at home.

As the director of polling for The Washington Post, I join my fellow pollsters in the hospitality rooms at professional meetings to drink cheap wine and listen as they talk nervously about the present and agonize about the future:

Two consecutive Election Day debacles have shaken public confidence in exit polls, once viewed as the crown jewel of political surveys.

Cell phones, Caller ID and increasingly elaborate call screening technologies make it harder than ever to reach a random sample of Americans. Prompted by the popularity of do-not-call lists, a few state legislatures are considering laws that would lump pollsters in with telemarketers and bar them from calling people at home.
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