Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (250307)	4/23/2002 6:41:56 PM
From: Mr. Whist	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Actually, Kenny, unpublished private polls by political parties may well be the most accurate. There are only two types of polls: scientific and unscientific. Scientific polls go to lengths to assure a valid, accurate sample; employ statistical analysis and identify margin of error to the tenth of a percentage point. The least scientific (and least accurate) polls are those conducted on the Internet, usually on partisan Web sites such as newsmax.com. Unscientific polls such as these are worthless. It also is extremely important to see how samples were obtained in scientific polls, and to look for bias in questioning. For instance, some legitimate polls preceding the last presidential election only polled people who had voted in the '96 presidential election. That's what made these polls (which predicted a big win for Bush on election day) inaccurate. They failed to include people who had not voted for a presidential candidate in '96 (like me) but who intended to vote for president in '00. They also failed to include us Democrats who intended to vote twice (just kidding here ... ha ha). Your best argument is that the most recent Zogby congressional poll results are too far away from November to be meaningful. Also, the fact that the undecideds are 31 percent does not make the 36-30 split non-meaningful. What is meaningful is that the Democrats have opened up a 6 percentage point lead from a couple months ago, when the Republicans had a 1 percentage point lead.