Answering Erikson

Legacy blog posts Likely Voters

The hardest part about blogging the last few weeks is that I get less time to simply read and surf than I used to. So you may already know about the following. .

First, I discovered that Philip Meyer, a Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote a column in USAToday on Erickson’s POQ article and the Gallup likely voter model. Money quote:

A likely-voter poll is the right thing to do if all you want is to predict the outcome of the election – but that’s a nonsensical goal weeks before the event. Campaigns change things. That’s why we have them.

It would be far more useful to democracy if polls were used to see how the candidates’ messages were playing to a constant group, such as registered voters or the voting-age population. Whoever is elected will, after all, represent all of us.
Read it all.

Second, another must-read for the polling obsessed that those outside the Washington Beltway may have missed: Washington Post Polling Director Richard Morin’s lengthy exposition on how tough it is to be a pollster these days. It covers all the topics we’ve been chewing over and some we haven’t gotten to yet: cell phones, reponse rates, Internet polling, etc. If you enjoy this blog, you’ll find much of interest.

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.