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Friday, September 17, 2004

So just who IS being polled anyway?
Posted by Jill | 7:13 AM
Everywhere I go, in real life or online, I hear people saying "No one I know is voting for Bush." Yet the polls continue to show Bush and Kerry in a dead heat or more likely, Bush with a small lead.

If these polls are correct, I have to scratch my head. How can anyone believe that this bunch should be elected this time? Oh, sure, there are the myriad of Bush/Cheney signs in my town, but this is a town with no Democratic organization and essentially no local elections, since the Democratic Party doesn't even bother to field candidates against the 30-year-entrenched Republicans. But looking at the big picture, there's a big discrepancy between the right track/wrong track numbers and the poll results. How can people believe that we're headed on the wrong track, how can half the country believe that we need a new president, and Bush continues to poll so strongly?

Jimmy Breslin may have the answer. In today's column, he talks to pollster John Zogby, who has decided that phone polling has become useless:

"The people who are using telephone surveys are in denial," Zogby was saying. "It is similar to the '30s, when they first started polling by telephones and there were people who laughed at that and said you couldn't trust them because not everybody had a home phone. Now they try not to mention cell phones. They don't look or listen. They go ahead with a method that is old and wrong."


With 159 million cell phones in this country, and more and more younger people eschewing land lines in favor of cell phones, and with pollsters continuing to insist on phone polling, it really is quite possible that the polls are wrong.

What this means is that we need good, nonpartisan (and this means NOT sponsored by the SCLM) exit polling. And we're not going to get it.

ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC, have created the National Election Pool, which will provided exit poll surveys presidential primaries, and will continue to do so in the November general election. The pool is a joint venture of Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International The AP will tally the vote.

Think about the news coverage that's been given to this race. Think about Bush's free pass on the war. Think about the the notion that presenting the Swift Boat Liars' lies is somehow "fair and balanced. CNN, Fox, and NBC have been unabashed cheerleaders for Bush. ABC isn't much better, and even Dan Rather was carrying Bush's water before he decided he'd had enough. As for AP, I have two words for you: Nedra Pickler.

These six major news organization, in a joint decision, have appointed Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International as the sole provider of exit polls for the most important political races of 2004. The AP will tally the vote.

I'll follow up later with any information I find on these companies, such as their political contributions. As for Nedra Pickler, I have to do my own homework for samples, because, alas, the Nedra Pickler watch site, "What a Pickler", seems to no longer exist.

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