Friday, October 10, 2008

Pollitics

Pop quiz: What significant quality relevant to opinion polls do the presidential elections of 1936, 1948, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1988, 1992, and 2000 all have in common?




Answer - In each of these elections, the results predicted by polls either late in the summer or at the time of the election were significantly incorrect.

Just a reminder, that polls are an artificial attempt to capture a reflection of the public mood at a specific point in time, and are not trustworthy predictors, especially in an unusual condition. Very few people would dispute this year is unusual, on many counts.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I didn't even know about this blog until now. You're a busy guy.

Lea said...

Thanks for the much needed reminder and for the wonderful analysis in the earlier post. Very enlightening.

Anonymous said...

For those of us who find it puzzling why the current financial crisis is causing a very close race to turn into a slam dunk for BO,I have several questions for you:1.Are the national samples used to show Obama pulling away oversampling democrats? 2. Since, contrary to the dems and MSM, it is considered very non PC (racist) not to vote for BO, could this also contribute to possible inaccurate polling results?