Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Polling Question

So, Zogby International runs a poll of the presidential race every day. Here are the results for today:

http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1587

I suppose they randomly sample the populace. Imagine if they randomly (by accident) called the same, exact people each day. Wouldn't the people give the same answers each time? Then, the poll results would never change.

So, what is the poll really measuring? The "changes" in the polling probably don't really reflect changes in how people are going to vote. The "changes" reflect changes in who was randomly called. If you ask any group of people two days in a row, you'll most likely get exactly the same (or at least very similar) answers. Right?

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