In the Internet Age, trust no poll that conceals its internals
Neither Reuters nor Zogby post the internals of polls whose results they tout as “news,” which is ridiculous in the Internet Age.
Reuters reports a Reuters/Zogby poll that shows Democrats ahead 42/33 on the generic Congressional question among “likely voters”, and says this: “The national poll, taken Friday through Monday, found 20 percent of voters still undecided about their congressional vote, leaving room for a momentum shift in the next six weeks.” So we know it’s a Friday-Monday poll, and we know that Friday-Monday polls usually are biased towards Democrats. And the business about 20% of “likely voters” being undecided smells fishy, as does the wiggle room created by the talk of a “momentum shift.”
But that’s not what bugs us. What bugs us is that this is supposed to be a “news” story, but the story conceals the news. There is no link to the pdf of the poll anywhere in the story or in at Zogby. Indeed, Zogby is particularly misleading, since its story has a link to the poll’s methodology, giving the whole matter a pseudo-scientific feel, but nowhere are the internals released.
Let us read the polliing questions and judge for ourselves. Let us take a look at the “party identification” numbers (often the place that the poll’s results are rigged), and let us decide for ourselves what the “news” really is. We should expect more from a polling company and a news organization, particularly a news organization which has doctored its photos in the past.
UPDATE
We just shelled out the $199 to subscribe to Zogby, and we’ll let you know if we get any better information as a result.
UPDATE II
Meanwhile, we’ll leave you with the thoughts of Stuart Rotherberg in Roll Call, via Drudge:
Rothenberg: “Count me as skeptical, and not only because most of these poll memos contain the dreaded “and when voters were read short descriptions about the candidates” second ballot that allegedly measures a challenger’s fundamental strength. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride…” “Well, I’ve seen that message, in one way or another, in almost every Democratic polling memo that comes across my desk. They almost always cite Bush’s standing. They almost all argue that voters want change or are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. “And they are right, but only so far.”