Election results vindicate the polls

November 12th, 2008 at 01:45pm Pat Cunningham

 

It’s an article of faith among some conservatives that America’s major polling organizations are biased toward the liberal side of the political spectrum.

These skeptics often contend that there’s a conspiracy among pollsters, and they love to cite anecdotal “proof” that the polls are way off base. (Consider, for example, the bleating by THIS GUY.)

And then there are the people (including a few of our regular commenters here on Applesauce) who don’t understand that the newspapers or networks that sponsor polls don’t actually conduct them themselves; they hire professionals to do the job. That’s why the results of Fox News polls don’t differ much from the surveys sponsored by The New York Times or NBC.

Funny thing, however. These critics of the polls have been mostly silent over the past week. I wonder why. Could it be that the pre-election polls were shown to be amazingly accurate? Yeah, that must be it.

Writing in the National Journal, Mark Blumenthal of  Pollster.com has an interesting SUMMARY.

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