Unlikely Voter

Sorry I’m behind in my polling commentary. Had a busy two weeks here. Time to start catching up.

The poll itself is unimportant: CNN asked adults about the Space Shuttle program. But the news comes on the front page of the CNN/ORC International poll: “The sample includes 856 interviews among landline respondents and 153 interviews among cell phone respondents.”

CNN is adapting to the new challenges in polling. Will they do well?

Yesterday CBS put out a poll on the debt ceiling. As with most issue polling in the heat of debate, everyone’s eager to hype the poll or to discredit it, depending on results. I even get asked to join in.

I’m skeptical of all issue polling to begin with, I tend to dismiss the polls entirely. But this poll has a serious weighting problem, and I want to call it out as worthless.

Some polls at least deserve some serious scrutiny before they get dismissed as flawed. Others are just so laughable on their faces that I hesitate even to put them in the same posting category as serious works. One of these laughers is This Texas poll from the apparently new firm Azimuth Research Group.

According to Azimuth, Ron Paul runs better for President than Rick Perry statewide among Texas Republicans.