Here's a great acticle about polls and weighting(why newsweek sucks)

[sonicx]

http://www.hs.ttu.edu/hdfs3390/weighting.htm

Interesting to note that Rasmussen did unweighted polls back in 2000, but had such bad results that he weights them now.

Also shows that Zogby has been ahead of the polling curve for the last decade.

Time, Newsweek, and some others are way off in this year's polling and the media will probably be shocked this november. :) ;)

(the author tries to straddle both sides, tho).

[sally343434]

1. I have a theory

Actually, I think the media's biased polls are part of their plan to insure a second illegal term for bush. With VNS conveniently out of the exit-polling business, these skewed polls will add an air of legitimacy to a rigged election.

"How can you question the outcome of the election? All the polls showed bush ahead!"

[LizW]

4. If Bushco can get CNN, ABC, NBC and FOX to parrot their talking points

you can bet they have no problem getting pollsters to make their polls come out with the desired results.

You're right, of course. The polls are all over the place and there are so many of them that anyone can find a poll to support his/her preconceived ideas of who's winning. The idea is to keep us all in the dark so that the results of the election won't be questioned.

[sally343434]

2. I have a theory

Actually, I think the media's biased polls are part of their plan to insure a second illegal term for bush. With VNS conveniently out of the exit-polling business, these skewed polls will add an air of legitimacy to a rigged election.

"How can you question the outcome of the election? All the polls showed bush ahead!"

[21winner]

3. Polls are BS.

The Dean campign proved it. The real poll is in Nov. and Kerry will win.

[LisaL]

5. Exactly.

Wasn't Dean ahead by a huge margin?
And looked what had happened to him.
So, let's not worry about stupid polls.

[althecat]

6. Extraordinarily useful article... thankyou sonicx

One thing that struck me is this...

Though he glosses over the issue I think reading between the lines he is obliquely saying the section on various possibilities that there is some jiggerypokery going on here.

He says there are three possible causes for the sample error in the Newsweek poll

1. There was a sudden, massive shift in party ID after the R convention.

2. Given that Newsweek's polling was done on Sept. 2-3 (partially overlapping the convention), one could argue that more R's than D's would have made it a point to be home to watch the convention, thus making themselves more accessible to telephone interviewers; even after the final day of the convention, R's may have been more politically energized, making them more likely to agree to participate in a survey.

3. It could have just been plain, "old fashioned" sampling error -- just as a coin, with probabilities of 50% heads and 50% tails, can yield 60% heads in a sequence of flips, random sampling of households could have yielded excessive R's just by chance.

Ok so three possibilities. He then rules out the first and third.

If Greenberg is correct about the stability of individuals' party ID, then the first of the three explanations (a sudden shift) seems unlikely. The fact that other recent polls besides Newsweek's have obtained samples with more R's than D's seems to go against the third explanation (chance).

Leaving us with option 2. Which I guess is his favoured one...

And then he leaves the subject. Which begs a few questions.

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh2004.htm

Firstly there wasn't two polls there were four - Newsweek, Time and CBS and ABC/Washpost - all which appeared to experience these sampling distortions. Secondly the CBS Poll was conducted well after the RNC, six days later, in the case of Time the energised republican polling base has now been struck twice by pollsters on 2 September and 9 September.

Those republican voters must have had a second wind. Either that or a fourth option needs consideration.

4. the sampling errors are deliberate.

[althecat]

7. P.S... the secondary bounce

Secondly I would note that in the two weeks since the convention there has in fact been a bush bounce quite a significant one. My guess is that the primary cause of this bounce is the positive poll reports that have practically been giving the race to *.....

This really sucks.