Where do you get your information from?

First, Polls are not science, at all - that is why the are not accurate. For years people have joked how far off polls were to the ending results. Hell, they can't even get exit polls correct.

They have no science, they select from a random list of pre-select numbers that is sold from one group to another, and drop call them.

The major reasons why Democrats suck at elections is simple.

1) They don't use religious lingo that appeals to Christian sensibilities. Ditto for sybmolism - flag waving, showasing of army vets, etc. These appeals to emotion, nationalism, and belief system go a long way.

2) They are never perceived as militaristic, so people feel insecure and unprotected (even though past Democratic Presidents have proven this perception wrong). Right or wrong, citizens want that feeling like if there is the slightest threat or terrorist action, you won't flinch at carpet bombing entire nations in retaliation. McCain gives this impression, hence he will always lead when it comes to voters views on national security.

3) Democrats are anti-gun. They can't figure out that with hundreds of millions of legally owned guns, to leave the 'gun control' idiocy out of any further politics. If people want guns, let them have it. They already have millions of them for goodness sake.

Do you? Why don't you work out the math on what a sampling of 1000 is across this country.

If you feel that is a fair sample, then why don't you build your company or sites, off asking a persons toe nail what they think you should do for your business. Or take your yearly total traffic, pick 1 random person, and ask them what you should do with your business.

You have no idea who the person is, what they do or don't know, what they think, watch or are told.. but hey, a 0.000333333333% sample should be all you need.

I agree, it's like someone that isn't currently working on the google algorithm giving you "FACT" up to the minute advice on SEO. Lots of room there to fuck around in my :2 cents:.

So if it's not accurate and basically pointless, you have to ask yourself why they do it? Is it something as sweet and innocent as getting high ratings and page views ... probably.

When I say science I mean the methodology that many polling companies use. There are some that have a formula of how they pick the people the poll, what questions they ask and how they ask them that allow them to be pretty accurate. Others simply dial 1000 random numbers and are not as accurate.

Polls are, historically speaking, pretty accurate. If you look back over the past presidential elections and you look at the state by state polls they were pretty damn close to how that state ended up voting. The same can be said for most of the national polls. Of course they are not exact, something that is subject to people's changing minds is never going to be exact, but many of them can be pretty accurate.

Exit polling, until the last presidential election, has been extremely reliable and even then it was pretty spot on with the exception of a few places. The UN actually uses polling, especially exit polling, to determine if elections held in third world countries are corrupt or not and in many cases they use the same the companies that provide the presidential polls. Here is an article on how exit polls are often used to make sure the vote count is accurate http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/we...ew/17plis.html

Here is a good site that shows the recent presidential elections and how the different polling companies did as far as their accuracy.
http://stolenthunder.blogspot.com/20...-national.html

With the vast majority of the companies listed they were within their margin of error on accuracy.

Here is gallup's numbers on the past presidential elections. http://www.gallup.com/poll/9442/Elec...Elections.aspx again, they are almost always within their margin of error.

Polling is not an exact science, but it is a science in that it has a system that it uses and a formula that it follows.

Here is a great example of why national polls often don't tell the story. in 1996 Gallup had Clinton winning 52% of the vote with Dole getting 41% and Perot getting 7%. The final numbers were pretty close with Clinton getting 50.1%, Dole 41.4% and Perot with 8.5%. Clinton got around 9 million more votes than Dole but when it came to the electoral count Clinton on 379 to 159, it wasn't very close at all.

In 1968 Gallup had Nixon and Humphrey within 1% of each other. The final vote finished within .6% of each other (gallup was all but perfect here) yet Nixon won 301 electoral votes to Humphrey's 191. It wasn't a close election at all.

I do agree with the exit poll stuff, and yes the last elections really screwed that up.

With the polls, they just use trends to calculate the data, they have tons of trend data to use. From local to previous fed elections. I'm sure the poll data comes into play. Other than the last couple of elections, you have to go way back to Kennedy to see a close race that probably couldn't just be guessed.

But look at the numbers, the ranges they are all 45 to 50, the "guess" isn't all that hard to make when you have years and 1000's of election trends to follow.

And it's funny to see 2000, when we know Gore really won but all but a few say Bush. Think about it, Gore won the popular, the polls-poll the people, they say Bush won. Nothing else needs to be said.

All that matters are state polls. Obama is still winning in the right states. The move looks to have helped McCain in the midwest, but put states like Florida into play now.

It's not about McCain.. It's all about Palin for now..

She's achieved rock star status.. the same thing that McCain bashed Obama with..

So far she's just read, and repeated a speech written by Bush's people that she practiced for a couple days prior to the convention.. But her delivery seems to impress people..

As was said.. Once she's faced with actually answering questions and not reading a teleprompter, then the story will be told...
She may do great.. won't know til it happens.. But the debate will be interesting, to say the least..

He is losing Ohio from what I saw.


May I mention that Polls are loved (on both sides) when in people's favor, and regarded as bs when going against. :winkwink:

That is very true. If your guy is up in the polls there are a million reasons why they are good, but if he is down in the polls there are a million reasons why they are not accurate.

If someone haven't pointed it out its not the popular vote that decides the election ;)
A great site for all information on the president, senate and house elections.
http://www.electoral-vote.com/

For example for all the non-partisan polls on Ohio
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp200...aphs/ohio.html

That is some funny shit. Shows just how little this cunt knows. Its almost laughable how they ran on experience and pull this shit. Mccain is an old bastard for making a mockery of our voting system. Then again its been shit for quite some time.

nice link. :thumbsup

It is a great site by far the best I've found its pretty unbias and it has all the info you need.
I started reading it 4 years ago and been reading it every day for a couple of months.