Pollster.com calls out Drudge and Fox for misuse of polls in hyping news

[grantcart]

No Changes in national polls

Pollster.com ran an unusual note basically chiding those news agencies that cherry pick a particluar poll.


The most important thing to keep in mind about pre-election polls is that they come with random variability built-in. That mostly predictable variation -- known to most of us as "the margin of error' -- comes from interviewing what we hope amounts to a random sample of likely voters rather than everyone that casts a ballot. So, if you look at a batch of new polls every day, the law of random chance guarantees that some polls will show your favorite candidate doing a little better and some will show that candidate doing a little worse. Moreover, one poll in twenty should produce, by chance alone, an odd result that falls outside of the reported margin of error (since that statistic is typically based on a 95% level of statistical confidence).

Given the number of new polls we are now seeing every day, it is all too easy to cherry pick one poll -- or easier still, one subgroup in one poll -- that seems to indicate a sudden, seemingly dramatic change and blow it up with a misleading scare headline. (including a link to Drudge)

The best advice I can offer right now, especially to journalists, is to emphasize what most of the surveys are telling us consistently and ignore the odd, contrary result, especially if hyped beyond all recognition by the pollsters themselves. More often than not, that odd "finding" turns out to be meaningless noise. The pollsters that shamelessly hype their results one day, take it back the next, while issuing warnings that important blocks of voters remain "volatile." Hardly. At this point, any such volatility tells us more about shortcomings in the polls than about volatility in the voters

No example of narrowing

Back to the national trend. There is simply no evidence as of yesterday's releases of a late narrowing of Obama's margin. The margin on our national trend has ticked up about a point in Obama's favor over the last two days. As usual, none of the national tracking surveys showed anything approaching a statistically significant change. Five of those results showed small, nominal shifts in Obama's direction, two showed unchanged margins and only one showed a small shift in McCain's direction.




Pollster.com trend for Battleground states

[HughMoran]

1. 9 recs with no replies!

kick!

[Psst_Im_Not_Here]

2. Kick!

Still, get out there and knock on doors and make some calls. Let's button this thng down!

[Roland99]

3. Thanks for the "sigh of relief" post

[HCE SuiGeneris]

4. K & R

[cliffordu]

5. I'm concerned.

[DainBramaged]

25. Why? Because FAUX said you should be concerned?

[Kukesa]

6. Nice post. K&R! nt

[Liberal Mommy]

7. K & R

Thank you for this! :kick:

[w4rma]

8. This is a good primer for how polls work. K&R. (nt)

[Blue For You]

9. Fox and Drudge don't "cherry pick", they chop down the tree.

:spank:

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Welcome to DU .. and after they chop down the tree they bulldoze

the land around it.

[progressivebydesign]

10. Excellent post! Excellent info! Take THAT Drudge!!!

K&R!! Love those graphs.. very easy to read.

[avaistheone1]

12. Shocking. I tell you I am shocked!

:sarcasm:

[Chrisnreno]

13. Thank you Pollster.com. K&R. nt

[abumbyanyothername]

14. The poll line that interests me is . . .

the "Already Voted" line.

And Obama leads that line in every poll by 15-20 points.

Which is better than Reagan did.

[grantcart]

23. right

[crossroads]

15. No concerns here! k&r

[myrna minx]

16. K&R n/t

[IsItJustMe]

17. Fixed news is waging psychological warfare on the American public. Someday in someway these sleaze

balls will get their just desserts.

[Laelth]

18. k&r for the truth! The (R)s are dishonest and spinning like tops.

The United States is a LIBERAL Country.

:dem:

-Laelth

[asdjrocky]

19. Good!

Now if we can just get them to call out some of the posters at DU who post panic riddled drivel every time there's a point change in the polls.

[jenmito]

20. They should also call out MSNBC for their NBC/Mason-Dixon polls they KEEP using

today.

[okieinpain]

27. yes, where did that poll come from. just out of the blue and bam

screw all the other polls, it's the mason/dixon poll.

[Lumpsum]

21. Florida is still too close for comfort.

But now I know Obama will win PA. Which pretty much means he will win across the board.

[DeepModem Mom]

22. K&R

[Blondiegrrl]

24. Wow. Good to know. Thanks! nt

[woolldog]

26. It's also a criticism of Zogby.

He's revealed himself to be a very unprofessional pollster.

[smb]

28. 95% Confidence Means 2.5% Chance Of Outliers In Each Direction

If the poll is just within "margin of error" (and most of the ones Morning Joke et al are touting as "within the margin of error" are just barely so) and is at 95% confidence, that means a 2.5% chance that McLame is actually winning, and an equal 2.5% chance that he's losing twice as badly (or worse) than the poll number says.

Given that McLame needs to run the board of tossup states, he's in the position of somebody gambling on getting the grand prize with a single lottery ticket.