(Community Matters) I was thinking about something else Arianna Huffington said yesterday. According to her, pollsters only reach 25% of respondents today and we should categorize polls as enlightened opinions (my words not hers), entertaining but not scientific. She even went so far as to say they should be placed along side horoscopes and advice columns in newspapers.
So, I’ve gone on line to try to find research on the accuracy of today’s polling. In fact, I can’t find much since 2004, even more from 2002. No information on the importance of the rate of respondents. Alas, I’m left not knowing how to integrate Arianna’s information into my thinking.
I do recall David Plouffe’s (co-chair Obama Campaign) comments in a conference call 5 or 6 weeks ago. He said three things about polls: 1) national polls are worthless, look only at state by state polls, 2) there is no Brady effect, they proved this during the primaries (those who would skew the polls this way aren’t identifying as Obama supporters), and 3) all the good pollsters have accounted for no land line groups of voters and accommodated for this in their methodology (again proven to BO’s campaign during the primary)
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