A poll based on 160 respondents is useless. There are 350 million people in the country. Extrapolating the results from 160 to 350 million is stupid, and does not give you a reliable number.
The 8% margin of error assumes that the 160 were a very typical representative segment of the population, in no way different from a group composed of 160 people who are definitely going to vote, chosen completely randomly without regard to where they live, possession of a land line, willingness to talk to a pollster, without regard to time of day (many people work at night).
That doesn’t include the dead people in Chicago who will vote democrat.
Rush nails it, as usual.
This has been popping up all over the place this morning, 160 people plus or minus eight as the margin of error. So those polls last Friday — now, here’s the thing. Those polls have already worked. There’s a reality about the makeup of the American people. There are people in this country who only watch the network news and only read the newspaper. They do not listen to what you and I would call advocacy or partisan media. Therefore, they don’t know anything other than what they see. Now, we don’t know how many they are. The election will actually demonstrate this. It’s one of the big questions facing us in this election: have we lost the country?
Have we reached the tipping point and all those questions that we’ve been asking. But there are people who only know, and it’s not just the elderly who are afraid of computers. People from all demographics who simply watch the network news and read the newspaper, and that’s it. So those people today are thinking that Romney is down by ten and 11 in the three swing states, because they don’t know anything. And the Washington Post has not published this correction, if you will. It was discovered. And now it’s out there. But it’s important that you know about it, because as I say, this is corruption. I mean, to run that poll and try to present it as something serious. There’s no doubt here this has gone way beyond just bias. These people have thrown in with a political party. They’ve thrown in with a political party to the extent that they do not report news. They’re journalists. They will not report news that is in any way, they think, harmful or detrimental to their side.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: They are panicking if we are to believe them. We go to the audio sound bites, and a montage of reporters this morning talking about the polls.
JOHN BERMAN: The polls! There has been some tightening.
JOHN HEILEMANN: We’ve seen a little bit of tightening in some of the national polling just in the last couple days.
ANDERSON COOPER: New CNN/ORC numbers show the race tightening.
JOHN HARWOOD: Some tightening from a little surge that Obama had.
JAN CRAWFORD: The polls are tightening. That convention bounce that the president got is going to start to narrow.
RUSH: Last week the election was over.
Three states, swing states, ABC poll: Obama up ten, 11! We find out the Washington Post asked 160 people. Margin of error +/- eight! They found out about that at CNN. Their own poll has come into question. Here’s Wolf Blitzer last night on Situation Room...
BLITZER: Happening now: Just two days before the first Obama-Romney debate, and our new CNN national poll shows the president’s lost — Lost! — his post-convention bounce!
RUSH: No!
BLITZER: Our brand new —
RUSH: No!
BLITZER: — CNN/ORC poll of likely voters —
RUSH: No!
BLITZER: — shows the race between President Obama —
RUSH: No!
BLITZER: — and Governor Romney remaining up for grabs.
RUSH: No!
BLITZER: The president leads 50 to 47 percent.
RUSH: No!
BLITZER: But his three-point margin is within the poll’s sampling error.
RUSH: No! No! Did you hear? Wolf said, “[T]he president’s lost — Lost! — his post-convention bounce!” Oh-ho, no. John King is shocked to learn this! On CNN, Wolf Blitzer’s show, John King is shocked to learn that after months and months of telling us the opposite, suddenly this poll tells us this election is about Obama’s job performance and not his likability.
Oh, no!
KING: Governor Romney has improved his standing among independents. He now leads the president by eight points among those who describe themselves as “independent voters.” That’s a significant improvement for Governor Romney, 49% to 41% among independents. And, again, the defining question w-when you have an incumbent president: What do the American people think of that president’s job performance? Not do they like him, but what about his job approval rating? And the president’s is down in our new poll. Forty-nine percent of Americans approve of his performance; 48% disapprove. So the country essentially evenly divided on how the president has handled this job.
RUSH: Oh, no!
See, this was supposed to be about likability, not job performance. The media was gonna cover that up. But Obama, “First black president! Historical! He’s loved!” He was The One. He was The Messiah. Oh, no! Their poll shows that it’s about job performance. But wait! Bill Clinton spoke. Didn’t they tell us that Bill Clinton took care of all this? When Bill Clinton said (impression), “I’m gonna just tell you: There’s not a single person out there, including me, who coulda done anything with this economy. Nobody coulda done a thing. Nobody coulda done any better what this man did.” That gave Obama the Clinton bounce, and that was it. That’s why Romney was gonna lose.
Now that’s gone?
Now it’s about job performance?
Oh, no!
END TRANSCRIPT
So then, Romney is surging.
Great excuse. I think they're anticipating they'll lose.
The sad thing is ... I don't care.
And we STILL don’t focus on Conservative issues ... just idiot conspiracy theories.
I frequently see posts here about the “corrupt polls”, and such.
One question would be, if the public polls are indeed upside down, wouldn’t the Romney team gripe about this?
They wouldn’t allow the narrative that Romney is behind, if there wasn’t any truth to it.
My opinion is there is a rough truth to the current polls.
Romney is trailing, but not by much.
I also think there is a segment here trying to soothe the angst of losing by twisting poll demos to suit their ends.
One need only ask ourselves...What is the biggest prevailing fear of liberals, the liberal media, the ‘Washington establishment’ and our RINO'S and that paralyzes their minds?
Their fear is that a Conservative, a TRUE Conservative could possibly be elected to the second highest job in the the United States and second in line to the presidency.
They are, desperately, trying to lure Conservatives away from even thinking about the political movement in 2010 and they use their pollsters to accomplish that. Their complicit pollsters are doing everything possible to please their CUSTOMERS... the media... the newspapers... the pundits...television anchors... liberals... and rino members of Congress. It is an all out assault to undermine American values and beliefs. THEIR movement would be the envy of the most ardent propagandist.
They all will point to the polls to panic, discourage and dispirit members of Conservatives and grass roots Americans who were responsible for our 2010 political movement. They saturate the airwaves, newspapers, all the sources easily available to them, to proclaim our polls are accurate because ALL POLLS are showing the same data...it is indisputable proof that ‘this election is a dead heat’ or ‘the president has surged ahead in the swing states’ or ‘this election is all but over’.
Of course, ALL THE POLLS are showing the same indisputable proof, they have to validate each others ‘professional integrity’ by staying on the same page, don't they? I mean, how would it look to the public if wildly different data suddenly emerged out of nowhere with no +dems, no + rep? They can't and won't let that happen, it would just cause confusion amongst the masses and may even cause them to question their...collective indisputable proof. In short, they would lose the power to influence the direction of our politics.