A few final Friday thoughts for TPM Café Polls. Thinking about what each of us has had to say this week about the some of the hidden insides of the polling enterprise, we have to ask ourselves and everyone else: what's the carrot for the pollsters to change their ways and do the right thing: fully disclose all their methods of determining "likely voters" along with their turnout models, and turn over all the data; stop minimizing the "undecideds" in pre-election polls; stop manufacturing illusions of public opinion with poorly framed questions that offer no explicit opportunity to say "I have no opinion".

Right now... everyone, me included, is obsessed with the outcome of the election. But once it's over, we'll probably just do the usual thing by checking to see how close all the pre-election polls came to the final percentages for McCain, Obama, et al. And if the polls get the "winner" right and the precision of their projections is not too far off the mark, most of us, along with the pollsters, will probably go back to sleep until the next election cycle. We got the election right, so that validates the whole shebang. Never mind that, unlike pre-election predictions, there's no Wednesday morning reality check (after the Tuesday election results are in) to validate the poll results telling us what the public thinks about this or that policy issue, whether they approve or disapprove of the new president, and whether the country is now on the "right track" or the "wrong track". As long as we get the election right, all's well that ends well. Or is it? I'd like to think our postings and reactions this week have done at least some consciousness-raising in the blogosphere about the pitfalls of the polling business as usual. But without the carrot of say a badly blown pre-election call (1948 all over again), what's in it for the pollsters to do anything but business as usual?