The Post That Became The Alcatraz Around My Neck

Channelling Mayor Thomas Menino today. You know him. He's a bit conspicuous with that Alcatraz around his neck. Sad but true, this figure of speech will follow His Honor's memory longer than his lifetime of public service to do City of Boston.

I tried once more to post something written and submitted to websites in 2007. Charts and tables on Blogger make this exercise an Alcatraz...let's just say it is time consuming.

First, I will take partial credit for the update from the 2007 version. Here goes.

I trust exactly two pollsters: Zogby and Rasmussen. Of the two, Rasmussen is more accurate and I have to question Zogby's integrity. As far as I know, Zogby has never doctored numbers but there was the Zeigler incident.

Shortly after the 2008 election, Filmmaker John Ziegler released "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted." One of the premises of Ziegler's video is that the low-information voter carried the day for Obama. Yes, they were well-informed about which candidate had a daughter who had delivered a baby out of wedlock. But 57% of Obama voters were unaware that the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress on election day. To confirm what everyone knew--that Obama's supporters were ignorant of basic facts--Ziegler hired Zogby to poll McCain and Obama supporters. http://obotomy.blogspot.com/2012/02/retro-thursday-infamous-zobgy-poll.html

Zogby suffered blowback from the Dems. He was threatened with a party boycott if he worked with Ziegler again. So just how much credibility does Zogby have?

Rasmussen's polls have me wondering if someone has dirty pictures of Scott. "Right Track" suddenly jumps fifty per cent and suddenly the consistent 3:2 repeal health vanishes. More than convention bounce if you ask me. So even my two favorite pollsters are viewed with a lens of suspicion. But they are still far and away better than the field.

I might actually finish this post but in the meantime, I refer you to two sites. The first is nolanchart.com, a website that cannot recognize parentheses and apostrophes. http://www.nolanchart.com/article667-the-bad-science-of-scientific-polling.html

Because the presentation is so awful with all of those silly special characters floating around, I submit a second site for the primary data. http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04dem.htm

If you are not put off by special characters or jumping from site to site, please connect the dots. In any event, I will summarize the results. In the 2004 Democratic Primaries, the pollsters were not even close. One poll had John Kerry collecting 7% of the vote three weeks before the New Hampshire Primary. This survey was not atypical by any means.

Point is, polls can be discouraging. They can even be demoralizing. They can also be used to procure donations for a floundering candidate. But the science of polling has a long way to go.

Is there a Jeremiah in the house?  Not now, there isn't.