Read those polls with caution..

[KennedyGuy]

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/february_5_polls_four_cautions.php
"So what do the polls tell us about how tomorrow's Democratic contest will translate into delegates? While Barack Obama appears to be gaining support, there are four reasons to be cautious about what the various polls are reporting :

1) Polls are of little use in the caucus states. Roughly 13% of the Democratic delegates chosen tomorrow are from six states and one territory that hold party caucuses (Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota and American Samoa). Accurate polling in these contests is next to impossible because past turnout has been so light. Fewer than one percent of the eligible adults in the six states participated in the Democratic caucuses in 2004 (ranging from 0.1% in Alaska to 2.2% in North Dakota).

Turnout in the February 5 caucuses is anyone's guess, and as such, pollsters have wisely stayed away. We have logged only two polls in the six caucus states fielded since December. One of these was the Minnesota Public Radio News/Humphrey Institute poll (pdf) that explicitly warned it was "not a prediction of Tuesday night's precinct caucuses" because "the interviews did not identify likely caucus participants." The second, a Mason-Dixon survey in Colorado, is now nearly two weeks old and gave no indication what percentage of Colorado adults were deemed "likely caucus goers."

2) National polls may be misleading. Given the proportional allotment of delegates across such a large number of states, the national polls may provide a reasonable assessment of where the race stands. While we have a lot of very recent national polling data showing Barack Obama gaining, we have to remember that the February 5 states may look different than those not holding contests tomorrow.

So far, I have seen only two national surveys attempt to break out results for the February 5 states, and those show contradictory results.

The report released yesterday by the Pew Research Center allows a comparison across their last three surveys of Democrats in the February 5 states to those who will vote in later primaries. In the December and January surveys, Pew showed no significant difference between these two categories of states. Now, however, Obama does slightly (though not quite significantly) better in the February 5 states. Looking at it another way, virtually all of recent Obama's gains on the Pew survey have come from the February 5 states".
3) Are they sampling truly "likely voters?" Some national surveys, such as ABC/Washington Post and CBS, have reported the results of respondents who describe themselves as likely primary voters. Others, however, have reported on the views of registered voters or adults that identify as Democrats. While turnout is likely to be higher tomorrow than in 2004, the percentage of adults that vote in the Democratic primaries is still likely to be smaller than the percentage represented by most of these national surveys.



As should be obvious, turnout has increased dramatically in all the early states even (or perhaps especially) in states that featured little or no active campaigning by the candidates. If nothing else, this pattern suggests that turnout will exceed 2004 levels in all the February 5 states.

It is still worth considering that past turnout has amounted to a relatively small percentage of eligible adults in each state. The following table shows the turnout levels from 2004 for the February 5 primary states as a percentage of all adults an of eligible adults (as reported by Michael McDonald):



Here's the main point: Even if Democratic turnout doubles tomorrow as compared to 2004, the percentage of adults participating in the Democratic primaries will still be a fraction of the adults identified as Democrats or Democratic "primary voters" on most national polls. Do the truly "likely" voters look different than all Democratic identifiers? Are the statewide surveys doing a better job of selecting "likely voters" than the national polls? Unfortunately, we can only guess, as only a small handful of the statewide surveys report the percentage of adults that their likely voter samples represent.

4) Uncertainty remains high. If you pay attention to nothing else, remember this: As in New Hampshire, a lot of Democrats are having a hard time deciding between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. According to the Pew Research Center, both candidates now receive overwhelmingly positive ratings from Democrats:

Clinton: 80% favorable, 15% unfavorable
Obama: 76% favorable, 16% unfavorable
Again, as in New Hampshire, voters are expressing considerable uncertainty. In California, for example, both the Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen surveys report 29% of Democrats as either completely undecided or indicating there is still a chance they could change their mind about their preference.

This high degree of uncertainty creates the potential for a volatility that the final tracking polls may not reveal. Many voters will likely carry their sense of indecision into the voting booth, so the news and events of the next 24 hours could prove crucial".


snip

[KennedyGuy]

1. kick

[quinnox]

2. Polls are not to be trusted at this stage

If people start trusting some of these polls they are going to be very disappointed. The only poll that matters is the votes.

Polls are useless, look at how off they have been so far.