Election polling

With the upcoming elections it is interesting to look at the various polling services and to try and interpret their results.

Gallup, for example has Bush over Kerry 52 to 44 %, But if you look at Gallup�s historical results, they tend to overestimate the amount of the vote that the final winner receives. (with a few notable exceptions, namely Reagan, Truman and Ike). www.gallup.com...


The Iowa Electronic Markets is pretty interesting also.

128.255.244.60...

this has Bush $0.60 over Kerry at $0.40.


Rasmussen now reports Kerry with a %48 to %46 lead over Bush.
www.rasmussenreports.com...

While Pew has them tied at %47.

So basicly, you can pick your poll to support your view!

There are approx 2.2 million young voters who haven't been polled because they only use Cell Phones. These are registered voters and 96% of them said they are voting according to what I heard on the radio this morning.

How do they know they are voting if they can't be polled?

I for one will be glad if everyone switches over to cell phones and polling is done away with all together. I find it absurd that some people are actually suggesting that pollsters be allowed ot contact people on their cell phones for this purpose. Why should everyone have to pay to tell a pollster to not call them again? WHen you receive a call on your cell, you pay for it.

email and the internet according to the radio this morning.

Just had a pollster visit the house yesterday...

A majority of those here on ATS are the same crowd who live with a cell phone and haven't been polled. The same results will show up in the election as they did here when we were all polled. Today's youth isn't stupid, are super technically savy and know how to find the truth when needed.

A majority of those here on ATS are the same crowd who live with a cell phone and haven't been polled.

Off topic a bit, but out of curiosity, how do you have Internet access without the landline? Is it through your cable company?

Jemison

You ever heard of Blue Tooth? How about wireless phones with web browsers and email? My laptop can browse this site from anywhere on the planet without a land line. Ever heard of a black berry? Treo 600? How about the AT&T AudioVox Phone that came out Friday with everything that fits in your pocket and is smaller than a Palm?

T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, QWEST, all of them offer wireless mobile. Have for years.

Interesting polls, but what's NOT shown is their methodology or their margin of error. I found the stock market one intriguing, but don't know how it's done.

I tell you what is four voters in my house and none of us are register with any political affiliation so where will we go under? and if somebody comes to the door to ask what party I belong to I will tell them that is none of their business.

Polls are not reliable and that is the end of it.

I agree with byrd on the margin of error this elections are going to be something else when it comes to the amount of voters that are going to show to vote.

[edit on 023131p://111 by marg6043]

If anything, more than the issue of not tapping the 'cell phone only' demographic, political polls have a great source of bias and schewing. They're based on the people that actually stop what they're doing to answer a poll!

Originally posted by Byrd
Interesting polls, but what's NOT shown is their methodology or their margin of error. I found the stock market one intriguing, but don't know how it's done.

It is pretty simple. The total cost of each bundle of shares is $1.00 The payoff to the winner is $1.00. So if you think Bush will win by over 52% of the vote, then you buy a bundle from the IEM for $1.00, then sell off the parts you don�t want. You wind up paying 0.32 (the current market price) for Bush to win mby more than 52%. If you win you get $1.00. If not, you get $0.

iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu...

They trade a lot of interesting things, and it doesn�t cost much to join, but you have to mail them a check.