Campaign Puts Polling Methods Under Microscope

[yardwork]

Campaign Puts Polling Methods Under Microscope

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - - One poll last week had President Bush leading Democrat John Kerry by 13 percentage points while another showed the candidates tied in the U.S election race. What is going on with public opinion polls?

As U.S. voters are swamped by a blizzard of rival surveys in the final weeks of the Nov. 2 presidential election campaign, pollsters themselves are facing increasing questions about their methodology and accuracy.

...
Pollsters acknowledge that there are many ways errors can slip into their surveys including sampling errors, interview bias and poor questions. Even the order in which questions are asked and slight variations in wording can produce vastly different results.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040928/pl_nm/campaign_polls_dc

[daleo]

1. Well done, objective polls should not be out by very much

All this weighting and re-weighting is just to allow pollsters to manipulate results to get the product they want, or are being paid to produce. It is a smokescreen to:
- demoralize some people, so they won't vote.
- set up confusion before a rigged election, so the public will throw their hands up, saying "who knows".