"This election may end serious polling"

[wellstone_democrat]

Said to me by a Political Science colleague whose specialty is electoral politics. In a nutshell: caller I.D. and cell phones have made phone polling "problematic"---skews results even with adjustments. In essence: should the "numbers" be way off prediction (i.e. landslide or nearly so for one side or the other across a variety of balloting methods and types of party-affiliated districts) then she believes that polling will not be judged to be a useful tool in the future.

She has consulted with national campaigns in the last two prez elections and she had some interesting things to say about the "new problems" in getting a reliable sample. "A blowout-- or nearly so-- this election will finish this method off. Just like the first polls that wildly overpredicted Republican votes because the only people in those days who were *sure* to have phones in their houses were Republican bank presidents...we've come full circle"

Interesting eh? (Got to run to class, I'll check later for comments)

[clydefrand]

1. I think polls should be abolished completely.

Just let us work for our favorite person, listen to all sides, research positions, and then vote. And election days should be on Saturday and Sunday. Forget this Tuesday stuff altogether because DEMS have to work on Tuesday unlike a lot of rich repugs who don't or who can get off easily because they are running the show and can leave work whenever they want to. Now, there are some exceptions; a few of us DEMS are retired and can vote any day of the week as long as the old bodies will cooperate! They prefer to work better on sunny days!

:bounce: We're gonna win! It's sunny here in VA and tomorrow is also gonna be sunny!

[Shopaholic]

3. Sounds good to me!

Now if we could just get rid of the electorial college so the entire nation could vote for President instead of a handful of states. . .

[kentuck]

2. I could have told you a year ago that this race would be close...

and never call a soul...What benefit are they and what are thye telling us that we didn't already know??

[w4rma]

4. That would be nice. (nt)

[lefthandedskyhook]

5. Polling will continue

It will just be much harder to obtain an accurate sample. Candidates will still pay to take the pulse of the electorate for the foreseeable future.

The most forward-thinking pollster is Zogby. It seems, however, that any voluntary polling method is inherently vulnerable to organized skewing by groups willing to lie in unison. I wonder what could be done to thwart this sort of attack.

[ozymandius]

6. Zogby has sent me a steady stream of surveys.

I wonder if this will generate the next wave of polling data. The questions are insightful and take less time than a phone poll.

[Stuckinthebush]

7. Nope

There is too much money to be made in public opinion and political polling.

What will probably happen - assuming the polls are way off - is that the weighting methodology will be reworked. Polling, while not exact, is still a very impressive science.

[PATRICK]

8. Take out the word "scientific"

is there such a thing as "inexact science? A statistical method embroiled in sampling human psychology is prone to so many errors that the results not only are influenced all over the map but the intuitional judgments get fed back into data corruption(The Eyes of Heisenberg, en experiment is effected by the observer). The small framework of changing history in America further complicates and trivializes trends and conventional wisdom.

It is the mind of the gypsy that is impressive, not the crystal ball or even the raw material the gypsy mind uses to make an impressive forecast. How do we get at judgments then about the direction of the campaigns? Polling is a tool. It would be better not to tout the numbers so much. It would be even better if we could trust the honesty of the poll takers. Both are frustrating and dangerous issues for the public. Politicians get the real deal always. How are we to be guaranteed the same?

Science has been completely abused as a word on the political news scene whether it is global warming, computer voting, economy(now there we we are used to catching the murk of deception). Journalists barely comprehend any real science in any field. There are liars who employ lies and those who employ truth. Science is pretty much on a level with fantasy in their hands.

It is a public information and media(incompetence, lying) issue, because that is the crux of the downfall of polls.

[KharmaTrain]

9. It Will Change, Not End

There's lots of stuff in polling data other than the "beauty pageant" numbers that are extremely useful to many people. Zogby and Gallup didn't do their work for altruistic purposes, they have and will continue to make money from them.

Don't confuse the gather of the data with the interpretation. If there was a major flaw in this campaign, it will be the apparent change in people's communication habits. We're using cellphones, puters, hiding behind voice mail and not reachable the way we were 10 or 20 years ago. Until now the pollsters didn't realize how fast things have changed (c'mon how many of us used cellphones as our prime phones prior to 2000??) and they will adjust accordingly.

The ultimate game will be to perfect online polling...somehow coming up with a "signature" that identifies the individual rather than the machine, and then creating new ways to reach and track these people.

As George Carlin says..."you build a better mousetrap, some schmuck will build a better mouse"...

[TeddyKGB]

10. Your mouth, God's ears, etc.

:)

[Mandate My Ass]

11. Welcome to DU, TeddyKGB

Rounders is one of my favorite movies of all time. :hi:

[TeddyKGB]

12. "Pay heem."

"Pay dat myan hiz mahney."

;-)

[Mandate My Ass]

13. Hee hee, Malkovich was brilliant

Ed Norton as "Worm" was another knockout performance.