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Professional Explanation For The Absurd USAToday/Gallup Poll Released Today.....

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Here is a link to a professional statistician's analysis of why the USAToday/Gallup Polls are fundamentally unreliable.

http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/68/4/588?ijkey=053EosjdTO0oc&keytype=ref

Sorry the link is not hot - but TMP is it's usual unreliable self today - refusing to paste the URL using the 'link' feature.


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The article requires enrollment access through an educational institution or subscription, the piece concludes:

Conclusion

When polling on the eve of an election, estimating which respondents are likely to vote is an essential aspect of the art. This article has pointed to dangers of relying on samples of likely voters when polling well before Election Day. Our evidence suggests that shifts in voter classification as likely or unlikely account for more observed change in the preferences of likely voters than do actual changes in voters' candidate preferences. Much of the change (certainly not all) recorded in the 2000 CNN/USA TodayGallup tracking polls is an artifact of classification.

It was in Public Opinion Quarterly. Chicago: Winter 2004. Vol. 68, Iss. 4; pg. 588, 14 pgs

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