Questioning the polls

Questioning the Polls

This past Saturday was a volunteer day at McCain headquarters in New Hampshire. It was well attended and consisted of people calling voters, putting yard signs together, preparing mailers, and other assorted tasks. More than three times the targeted number of phone calls were placed. Having made some of these calls what struck me was how few people have definitively chosen a candidate. I had one definite McCain and one definite Giuliani and a handful of people leaning towards one candidate or another; but overwhelmingly people said they were undecided. This was similar for other callers too. To me it questions the validity of the polls. Maybe polls are useful as a guide to what people are thinking, but they are constantly reported on as a conclusive evidence of how people will vote in the future. How accurate could polls possibly be if more than half the electorate is undecided? Maybe this isn’t the best time to question polling since Senator McCain has pulled into second place nationally in an ABC poll, but it seems that maybe the news should be more about content and less about trying to predict the future.

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