A quick DEFENSE of the FoxNews/OD poll...

[The Vorlon]

That about sums it up for me, Vorlon.  THough I do favor pushing undecideds later in the campaign season and having a seperate listing of how they break.

My ideal is to have no undecided option, make the respondednt come up with that on their own.  Then push and describe how they break seperately.  

Undecided means undecided, especially this early in the campaign.  Most people are not engaged in the campaign right now.

Good job, Vorlon.  I'll have the UFO drop off a cookie tonight.

A question you would really like then is the so-called "unaided" ballot where you don't even read of the list of names, you just ask "Who are you voting for" and let them on their own totally un-aided or prompted say "Bush" or "Kerry" or what ever...

The logic, which I agree with, is that if you can't actually name without help who you are voting for, how "solid" is your support and how likely are you actually to vote?

The big reason that Nader is getting 5 and 6 and 7 % in many polls is that when you get down the the "last" 20% or so a registered voter poll we are dealing with a part of the population that rarely if at all ever votes - they are just randomly picking a name off the list so they have an answer.

Just for fun, I'd some day like to run a registered voter poll and replace "Nader" with "Smith" or "Jones" - I bet either Smith or Jones would get 5% too...

[millwx]

As an aside, what you and Tredrick are REALLY debating is if you should use a "likely" voter poll, or a registered voter poll.  

If you take the argument to it's logical end, what Millwx comes down to is you want to extract all the data you can from a sample, even if it is "soft" data, while Tredrick argues that 45% of the sample doesn't vote, so their opinion does not count...so why beat an answer out of folks who won't vote anyway...

Agreed.  And this isn't a simple thing to answer, because if you have a LV poll and you're screens are perfect, you'll have those unpushed undecideds that we're saying it's o.k. to beat the bejeepers out of.  Well, there's obviously nothing keeping those same people out of the RV pool.  So, pushing respondents in an RV poll isn't JUST pushing RVs, it's pushing RVs AND the subsample of LVs.  That's why, even in an RV poll, I want them pushed.  But, more preferrably, as you correctly state, I want a pushed LV poll.  When push comes to shove, no pun intended, and it's an RV poll and I have to choose between pushing and not pushing, I'd choose to push.  I understand you're argument that you've made in the past, Vorlon, about inserting gibberish that merely reflects the latest news cycle.  However, unless the news is overwhelmingly bad in one direction, I think these mushy people will probably split, lessening their impact.  Meanwhile, you capture these LVs who, in my opinion, need pushing.

So, Fox/OD is "fine", but I am just not PERSONALLY comfortable with how they do things.  Even in the 2000 election I cringe when people say they had it dead-on because they had a tie.  They still had nearly 10% undecided (a little lower than that) in their final poll!  That leaves so much room for error, I hardly find it useful.

Anyway, you're right Vorlon... I'd prefer LV polls and push the hell out of them.  And, frankly, given the high levels of attention being paid to this election so early, as compared to historical norms, I think they can do successful LV screens this early.  Perhaps NORMALLY they couldn't, but this year... yes.  Sure, the screen will improve as we near election day, but it probably won't be too bad now.  So, everyone should be doing LV polls.  In the latest batch, the only two who did this were Gallup and Democracy Corps.  Incidentally, both showed the race within 1%... thus my discomfort when an unpushed, RV poll (Fox/OD) differs by 5-6%.