| As more and more polls appear, the question arises: exactly who is checking their legitimacy? The answer, unfortunately, is that nobody is. Last year, a firm called Strategic Vision, LLC was discovered to have essentially fabricated a huge number of supposed samples in dozens of critical races around the country. Now, Research 2000, until recently the house polling firm for DailyKos, has been called into question. The paper speaks for itself: (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/6/29/169/32552) In brief, we looked at some 75 published polls, and examined how much statistical variation they contained compared to the minimum expected by statistical theory given their sample sizes. The Research 2000 polls showed too little fluctuation, were too consistent to one another, and generally showed signs that they were not properly calculated or were not based on actual interview data. |
Michael Weissman, a retired physics prof who was largely responsible for assembling definitive evidence against Strategic Vision, LLC, was responsible for doing all the heavy lifting and wrote most of the text. His son, Jon Weissman, also a physicist, assembled the data from a large number of polls with varying formats and questions. My role was largely limited to starting this ball rolling, making a few statistical suggestions, and generally getting in the way of progress. |
