The New Bailout

Originally Posted by classicman

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What I do remember about polling from college is how extremely difficult it is to get accurate information and how skewed the data therefore can be. They attempt to weigh/modify/alter the data to make it credible and make a prediction. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong.

Yep..I agree it is hard for you and me (with my one course 20+ years ago) or even self-proclaimed experts like Merc.

Its not that hard for those with the proper educational training and the knowledge and experience of applying widely accepted statistical procedures and anti-bias protocols.

And that's why they can report with a 95% confidence level within maximum margin of sampling error of ±3 percentage points.....far greater than "sometimes right and sometimes wrong."

I dont need 100% confidence with zero margin of error to find polls useful to understand public opinion on an issue.

In slightly different polling, one only need look at the 08 election results and final pre-election polls (by state and nationally) to see how close the pollsters were to the final results. Aggregating the major national polls predicted Obama -52.0%, McCain - 44.4 and the final results Obama- 52.9%, McCain -45.6