[Scott Rasmussen is now writing for WorldNetDaily. This is his
first article.]
Polls and klunkers
� 2000 WorldNetDaily.com.... Sept. 13, 2000
Journalists routinely cite public opinion polls in reporting
political campaigns and other news stories. They also routinely
cite the poll's "margin of error" which lends an air of precision
to the data. However, few consumers of polling data really
understand what "margin of error" means and how it should affect
their interpretation of the data.
Polling theory tells us if you ran the exact same survey under
the exact same circumstances, you would get results within the
margin of sampling error 19 times out of 20. While that's a
pretty high level of comfort, it also means one poll out of 20
will be outside the margin of sampling error. Some people in the
business call these rogue polls. At Rasmussen Research, we call
them klunkers.
What's really scary about this for a pollster is it's generally
hard to know when you've had a klunker.
For example, suppose you run an election poll one week and find
the two candidates are pretty close. Then, a week later, one of
the candidates has a 6-point lead. There are several
possibilities. One is that something really changed in the race
during that week. Another is one of the two polls was a klunker.
A third, less likely, is the race is actually right in the middle
and your two polls captured the extreme ends of the margin of
error. The only way to know for sure is to conduct a third survey
(and maybe even a fourth for comfort).
For the Portrait of America Tracking Polls, we've conducted over
100 nightly surveys in the race for president. As a result, we've
probably have had five or more klunkers. That's one of the
reasons we report results as part of a three-day rolling average.
If we have a klunker, the impact is muted by the fact that we're
averaging in two other surveys.
Also, by using a large sample of 2,250 likely voters, we have a
smaller margin of sampling error than other surveys (+/- 2
percentage points). This means if we are slightly outside the
margin of sampling error, the apparent impact is less dramatic
than it would be with a 4-point margin of sampling error.
So, when you look at a series of polls that show one result and
find one poll is out of synch, you should generally assume the
majority of polls are right.
Last week, the Portrait of America Presidential Tracking Poll
showed George W. Bush clinging to a 2-point lead in the popular
vote for president. A Newsweek poll showed Vice President Al Gore
up by 8. Other polls were reported showing the race somewhere in
between.
Republicans came to Portrait of America commenting on the
fairness of our poll while trashing Newsweek. Democrats came to
the Portrait of America site offering nasty comments and telling
us that Newsweek proved just how far off base we were.
In reality, virtually all polls of the presidential race
conducted last week showed essentially the same result. Our
tracking polls showed each and every day the race was within the
margin of sampling error. One day, it was a pure tie. Eight other
polls released last week showed the race within the margin of
sampling error and the most common result reported was a tie.
So, looking at all available data, it's safe to conclude the race
for president was a toss-up and that the Newsweek poll was just
an aberration.
Since then, both the Portrait of America and Gallup Tracking
polls have shown some movement in Gore's direction. This might be
a trend, and it might just be statistical noise. We won't know
for sure until we conduct a few more surveys and see where things
settle out.
I'm not suggesting the margin of error is all you have to worry
about when evaluating polls. Next week, we'll talk about the
difference between registered voters and likely voters and how
the differences can lead polling firms to report different
results.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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