Nate Silver: The Worst Pollster in the World Strikes Again

[babylonsister]

The Worst Pollster in the World Strikes Again
by Nate Silver @ 8:35 AM


Dirty little secret: I sometimes write material in the late evening that will be posted the following morning. This is one of those instances. The early word, however, is that a Zogby poll to be released today will show Barack Obama's presidential approval numbers at around 50-50.

As of this writing, the Pollster.com average has Barack Obama's numbers at 59.3 percent approve and 33.8 percent disapprove; the Real Clear Politics average is slightly more favorable to Obama, at 61.2 percent approve and 30.5 percent disapprove.

So a Zogby poll that put Obama's numbers at roughly 50-50 would be a significant outlier. Outliers are nothing new, however, when it comes to Zogby polls. They are, in fact, the rule and not the exception.

Let me qualify this a bit: Zogby International conducts two types of polls. One type are conventional telephone polls. Zogby's telephone polls, while prone to somewhat wild fluctuations and subject to their share of erratic results (such as predicting a 13-point win for Barack Obama in the California primary; Obama lost by 9 points), are actually not terrible, and did fairly well on November 4th.

Zogby, however, also conducts Internet-based polls. These polls are conducted among users who volunteer to participate in them, first by signing up at the Zogby website (you can do so yourself here) and then by responding to an e-mail solicitation. These Internet polls, to the extent they rely on voluntary participation, violate the most basic precept of survey research, which is that of the random sample. And as you might infer, they obtain absolutely terrible results.

more...

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/worst-pollster-in-world-strikes-again.html

[Cha]

1. Rec'd~ Thank Goodness

for Nate Silver!

[Jennicut]

2. Why does Zomby insist on using these dumb telephone polls when they are shown

to be so inaccurate? Well, I know the answer to that. But still.

[ErinBerin84]

3. Zogby is so predictable

[FrenchieCat]

5. At about a 95% rate, their poll results are to be used as a political tool!

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. Zogby's nonsenses convinced a lot of DU Obama haters that their boy McCain

was close in Pennsylvania.

Obama won by 11%.

:rofl:

[4lbs]

6. That right there should have disqualified Zogby from ever being trusted again until he modifies his

methods to be less than 2 or 3 percent off from the actual results.

However, if a pollster claims that two candidates are virtually tied in a state, and one actually ends up winning by double-digits instead, that methodology must be questioned and discounted until fundamental changes are enacted to prevent such a disparity.

[mvd]

9. And remember his having McCain up by 1 nationally?

He lost a lot of credibility then.

Really, it seems he loves attention more than accuracy.

[bluestateguy]

7. Before these silly Zogby International polls, he was at least a decent pollster

His numbers in 1996 and 2000 were not bad at all.

Internet polls are trash and always will be.

[ellacott]

8. You can count on Morning Joe and other "media" to highlight this poll

Morning Joe and Fox will probably mention this during their entire show.

[Doctor_J]

10. This will mostly be published to give Big Media something to blare about

But the far right doesn't seem to realize yet that no one is listening any more. Or at least it's the same tiny fraction of Dittiots that swallow all of their shit.