Polls

The polls are a big story this week. First the Rasmussen Poll taken March 15^th shows Sen George Allen leading Harris Miller 56% - 27%. Sen Allen leads Jim Webb by 54% - 30%. Sounds good to me. Then we have this Wall Street Journal Zogby poll taken the 22^nd -27^th showing Sen Allen only ahead of Webb 48.9% - 41.7%. Damn I said. How could that be? After reading the Zogby results over, I see that the poll was a Zogby Interactive poll. That is a ONLINE POLL. By that I dont mean a computer poll, but it phones people who registered online to be polled. Zogby International does phone polling. That is in the fine print. If you read the methodology you can see what I am saying. I am not worried. Online polls of members could be easily skewed. This was a poll of registered Zogby Interactive Users not random Virginians. If you really look at the difference in the results it is not hard to understand that. Now if I am wrong about that process, please feel free to inform me.

From Zogby

These polls were conducted by Zogby International. Online polls were conducted by the company's Zogby Interactive unit. Phone polls were conducted by Zogby International.

Online polls were conducted by Zogby Interactive, a unit of Zogby International of Utica, N.Y. Zogby has assembled a database of individuals who have registered to take part in online polls through solicitations on the company's Web site as well as other Web sites that span the political spectrum. Individuals who registered were asked to provide personal information such as home state, age and political party to Zogby, which in turn examined that data and contacted individuals by telephone to confirm that it was valid.

Zogby International telephoned about 2% of respondents who completed the interactive survey to validate their personal data. To solicit participation, Zogby sent emails to individuals who had asked to join its online-polling database, inviting them to complete an interactive poll. Many individuals who have participated in Zogby's telephone surveys also have submitted e-mail addresses so they may take part in online polls.

The Interactive polls were supplemented by 20 to 50 telephone calls in 19 states (AR, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, MD, MI, MO, NV, NM, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TN, TX, VA, WI) to ensure proper representation of all demographic groups.

I dont think it is accurate after the past 2 Rasmussen polls showing over a 20 percent lead. Think about it.

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