Jackson50 said:
National polls are often hyped because they give people something to discuss...much like this thread. A more accurate portend for the outcome of the election is the polls of the individual states. Their frequency is not a problem. Multiple polls a week from the same state is superfluous. I am unsure as to how they are poorly done. They are mostly conducted by the same polling firms that conduct national polls. |
About half of them are done by national pollsters, the other half by in-state or local groups, who don't always have the same methodologies. Sometimes they better understand the state's electorate though, which the national pollsters can misconstrue.
State polls are an important gauge, but they should be taken with as much or more incredulity as national polls.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
