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_Abyssinia
Guest
Introducing The New Polling Firm of Madoff, Marist, Quinnipiac and Ponzi
Here’s the transcript of the conversation I had with Marist’s Lee Miringoff from mid-September…
I have talked polling with Michael Barone twice, on September 17 and on September 26, and once with the Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost, also on September 26.
I also spent a lot of time with the National Journal’s Director of Polling Reporting, Steven Shepard, on Septmeber 25, and that transcript is here.
Here are the key takeaways from all these conversations.
The pro-Obama pollsters don’t have answers as to why their skewed samples are trustworthy beyond the fact that they think their approach to randomness is a guarantee of fairness, and they seem to resent greatly that the questions are even asked. Like Madoff would have resented questions about his stunning rate of return.
Barone notes that percentage turnout by party in a presidential year hasn’t been much greater for the president’s party than it was in the preceding off-year, which makes samples outstripping even the 2008 model of Democratic participation “inherently suspicious.”.
Cost notes that Romney is winning the independent vote in every poll, which also makes big Obama leads suspect.
And my conversation with Mr. Shepard, whose employer National Journal has a reputation for the best non-partisan work inside the Beltway, didn’t find any academic, disinterested support for the proposition that party identification cannot be weighted because of the inherent instability of the marker.
The biggest unanswered question of all: If party ID is so subject to change that it should not be weighted according to an estimate of turnout, why ask about it at all? And if it is for the purpose of detecting big moves, as Mr. Shepard argued, why not report that “big move” in the stories that depend upon the polling?
Over the next few weeks, the junk polls will start tweaking their samples and dancing around that fact in order to come closer to reality. Too late. The sample controversy has penetrated into the public’s mind, and Quinnipiac and Marist are marked as either rubes or rogues unless the huge democratic turnout advantage materializes on November 6.
In the meantime, if you see a story on a poll that doesn’t tell you the partisan make-up of the sample, note to yourself that the reporter is missing the most interesting bit of data to most readers.
Just as Bernie Madoff used to hide the real story.
townhall.com/columnists/hughhewitt/2012/09/29/introducing_the_new_polling_firm_of_madoff_marist_quinnipiac_and_ponzi/page/full
.
Here’s the transcript of the conversation I had with Marist’s Lee Miringoff from mid-September…
I have talked polling with Michael Barone twice, on September 17 and on September 26, and once with the Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost, also on September 26.
I also spent a lot of time with the National Journal’s Director of Polling Reporting, Steven Shepard, on Septmeber 25, and that transcript is here.
Here are the key takeaways from all these conversations.
The pro-Obama pollsters don’t have answers as to why their skewed samples are trustworthy beyond the fact that they think their approach to randomness is a guarantee of fairness, and they seem to resent greatly that the questions are even asked. Like Madoff would have resented questions about his stunning rate of return.
Barone notes that percentage turnout by party in a presidential year hasn’t been much greater for the president’s party than it was in the preceding off-year, which makes samples outstripping even the 2008 model of Democratic participation “inherently suspicious.”.
Cost notes that Romney is winning the independent vote in every poll, which also makes big Obama leads suspect.
And my conversation with Mr. Shepard, whose employer National Journal has a reputation for the best non-partisan work inside the Beltway, didn’t find any academic, disinterested support for the proposition that party identification cannot be weighted because of the inherent instability of the marker.
The biggest unanswered question of all: If party ID is so subject to change that it should not be weighted according to an estimate of turnout, why ask about it at all? And if it is for the purpose of detecting big moves, as Mr. Shepard argued, why not report that “big move” in the stories that depend upon the polling?
Over the next few weeks, the junk polls will start tweaking their samples and dancing around that fact in order to come closer to reality. Too late. The sample controversy has penetrated into the public’s mind, and Quinnipiac and Marist are marked as either rubes or rogues unless the huge democratic turnout advantage materializes on November 6.
In the meantime, if you see a story on a poll that doesn’t tell you the partisan make-up of the sample, note to yourself that the reporter is missing the most interesting bit of data to most readers.
Just as Bernie Madoff used to hide the real story.
townhall.com/columnists/hughhewitt/2012/09/29/introducing_the_new_polling_firm_of_madoff_marist_quinnipiac_and_ponzi/page/full
