My E-mail To CNN Regarding Gallup

[WI_DEM]

I know that they will be whoring the new 54-40 Gallup poll tomorrow and when they start, I'm ready.

Dear CNN:
You may want to reassess your relationship with the Gallup polling organization as they are fast becoming a laughing stock. In the last two days several respected organizations such as Harris, The Christian Science Monitor, and Pew have come out with polls showing the presidential race is a dead-heat. Tracking polls such as Rasmussen have shown the race to be within the margin of error. Even Fox news has a poll showing the presidential race is too close to call. Yet once again you are trumpeting a trumped up Gallup poll giving Bush a ridiculous 14-point margin over Kerry.

You may recall, as I'm sure you broadcast it in 2000 that the week before the election that year, Gallup had a poll showing Bush leading Gore by double digits. You might recall in that election Gore actually won the popular vote--it was quite a story as I recall.

So, it would be nice that when Bill Schneider and company are "wringing" their hands about how Bush is a shoo-in that you also mention that several other polling operations are showing the exact opposite. Also, did you notice the new state polls which are being released by another respected pollster? American Research Group. It behooves me to understand how John Kerry can be behind 14-points nationally and be only one-point behind Bush in Colorado, a state which has only voted Democratic once in the last 40 years in a presidential race.

Also, could you ask Gallup to release their methodology? It would be interesting, not to mention amusing to see how many Republicans they polled compared to the number of Democrats.

Regards

[Teaser]

1. Are they trumpeting it yet?

what the title asked.

[WI_DEM]

5. not yet, tomorrow

[still_one]

2. One suggestion

mention the Harris poll. They have been doing polling for years, and have a very good reputation

[still_one]

4. sorry you did mention the Harris poll

GREAT LETTER!!!

[joanne]

3. Great letter!

[PassingFair]

6. Right On!

Great letter! My company (YellowBook) is involved in a lawsuit in Maryland with Verizon. During the trial, the methodology of Verizon's Gallup polling info (showing Verizon WAY ahead of us) was called into question. Guess what? It was demonstrated that Verizon GAVE the numbers to Gallup to spit back out. They have been ordered to stop using their Gallup numbers. Guess what polling company we use...yup Harris, but now, we can't use our numbers either until the smoke clears....

Gallup is definately SUSPECT!

[WI_DEM]

7. As Arte Johnson used to say

"Veddy interesting."

[johnnyrocket]

8. All CNN talks about is how Bush is winning....

they can't stop! WTF!?!? Paula Zahn said "Every poll shows Bush is going to win." What crock!

This force feeding of skewed polls is so blatant, and more significantly, it probably works to sway public opinion.

The fascist media is alive and kicking to prop up this fascist regime.

[Gloria]

9. Before I worked for Gallup, which back in the late 70's was the most

respected outfit around (before it was sold off to ??), I worked for a now defunct market research outfit as a coding supervisor.

One of my jobs was to create "answers" to be used in the results based on tallying up open-ended questions. In other words, questions that people could answer freely, not just the pre-listed answers to choose from.

So, for one client, a giant credit card outfit, I tallied up the answers to a question and come up with about 40 answers that should have been coded. The client didn't want to pay for it, so I was told to "collapse" the 40 answers down to.....20.

Now, can you imagine how "accurate" that poll was????

That's a clear indication of how answers can be manipulated at the most basic level, in the coding room....Anything can be combined any way...
so it doesn't have to be just bad sampling that skews a poll....

Needless to say, I quit shortly thereafter...and wound up at Gallup!!


PS--this is a really great letter!!!!!

[WI_DEM]

10. I just sent it on to them

[cthrumatrix]

11. what is cnn's number..?