Brillian analysis of the polls
Excerpt:
TIPP: This is another poll that remains mum. Go check out their website, tipponline.com, and try to find any methodological detail. I dare ya! No information about how they weight (if they weight) their respondents by demography or by partisan affiliation. No information about their method whatsoever. They just publish a poll every afternoon and expect you to trust them. I henceforth choose not to!
---SNIP---
Zogby: Drummond seems to think that Zogby simply fell ass-backward into his present notoriety. Zogby predicted 1996 accurately and came close in 2000. However, his track record is generally lousy. Zogby has a devastating methodological problem -- his polls are not conducted randomly. He uses regional quotas. He is the only one of all these polls (that make any methodology known) that employs this technique. Furthermore, Zogby does not conform his data to industry standards. Rather, he uses -- among other sources -- his previous data. Neither of the standard-setters in the polling industry accept this practice. Zogby also weights his polls to strictly conform with the 2000 partisan turnout results -- a result that BC04 has spent tens of millions of dollars to change. Zogby, a supposedly independent pollster, also called the race for Kerry...IN THE SPRING! Zogby is also one of the chief practitioners of the internet poll, which is really quite unacceptable. Because I have (unfortunately) used Zogby here at this site, I will quote the very estimable Drummand at length (consider it part of my pennance): "All in all, Zogby’s habit of confusing his personal opinion with data-driven conclusions, his admitted practice of manipulating the respondent pool and his demographic weights, by standards not accepted anywhere else, along with mixing Internet polls with telephone interview results, forces me to reject his polls as unacceptable; they simply cannot be verified, and I strongly warn the reader that there is no established benchmark for the Zogby reports, even using previous Zogby polls, because he has changed his practices from his own history."
I know all of that. Source of my depression today was listening to a local radio host today (Neal Boortz) who is now cinvinced that Kerry is going to win. Unfortunately I have less faith in the American people than he does...