Nov 03 2008
Polls Are They Really Accurate?
Sitting here flipping through different channels I have to chuckle when I see the polls that people show on television. One channel will have McCain leading while the other channels will have Obama with a lead. I guess it all depends on which candidate that you are rooting for. My personal opinion is they should not even release any polls at all especially a week before the election.
Many times these polls can affect who people vote for because if they see one candidate behind a lot they tend not to vote. This is one of the main reasons I think polls should not be released. The bottom line though is polls make good conversation on television and around the water cooler so you will always have it I guess.
Well, you could always do what CNN does, and average them to get a better picture. Or, you could eliminate the top and bottom outliers and average the rest.
If you want to actually understand the process, and figure out why some are very different than others, you can look at the internals, i.e. the data that tells you how many people were interviewed, what questions they were asked, and what their party affiliation is when the poll was taken.