Trolling The Polling
Paul Mirengoff over at Powerline is among those taking issue with the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, particularly regarding the questions asked about the wiretapping issue:
PE has addressed the weighting issue before and you can read the entire post for more, but here’s the basic explanation from it:
A New York Times/CBS poll purports to find that support for the president's warrantless surveillance program is "mixed." But the poll is bogus. In addition to the usual MSM trick of over-sampling Democrats, including non-voters, etc., the pollsters asked misleading questions that do not reflect the actual nature of the NSA intercept program.
PE has addressed the weighting issue before and you can read the entire post for more, but here’s the basic explanation from it:
The issue of weighting in polling is much discussed and debated, and there is plenty out there to consider. Mystery Pollster has some of the most in-depth discussion on all aspects of polling (you can find out all about weighting here). The issue of weighting is, at its root, about adjusting data to reflect the most accurate picture possible. There are plenty of arguments about how to do that, but for our purposes here, let’s stick to how CBS News does it.
Author Thomas Friedman on Obama's Afghanistan plan and the war on terror.
