Hmm, very interesting stuff. What is it that Mason-Dixon does that gives such perpetually stable results?
This post is from a while ago, but this seems as good a place as any to ask it. It seems to be pretty well unanimous that Mason-Dixon is the best and most trustworthy pollster around, especially in Florida. Whenever a poll from Florida comes out and it's not by Mason-Dixon, everyone always says to trash it.
My question is in two parts: if Mason-Dixon is so good, 1) what do they do, and 2) why doesn't everyone just copy it? On the face of it, it seems kind of silly for people to all be doing their own thing if one polling agency consistently does better than the others.
You don't seem to aware of a little word called "business secrets". Well, two words, but you know...basically, people don't necessarily know what Mason-Dixon does. Secondly, as Carl pointed out, a good poll costs money and not everyone wants to pay. As to bad pollsters surviving, it's a tough business and it's hard to be good at it, obviously.
But every media outlet wants to have it's own poll, so that they can get exclusive news. Whether the poll is actually good is less important, since most consumers have no idea anyway. So if media outlet X has taken good pollster A, media outlet Y has to settle for semi-good pollster B and so on, and evnetually someone has to take what's left over.
