Trump’s in the lead — but these polls are junk

[Valin]

NY Post:

John Podhoretz

August 18, 2015

 

The political story of the summer is Donald Trump’s polling. But the political story of the year is the disastrous condition of polling in the age of the Internet and the cellphone, not just here but worldwide.

 

How can we reconcile the two? We can’t.

 

(Snip)

 

Polling is a social-science synecdoche, which means that to construct a poll you take a small group and use it to stand for a much larger one.

 

But getting a random sample is becoming almost impossible. People used to answer the phone and talk to pollsters; now a polling firm is lucky to get 8 percent of those who answer the phone to respond.

 

Meanwhile, the number of people who only use cellphones has grown dramatically, nearing 50 percent. And federal law makes it a crime to make an automated call to a cellphone — so someone working for Gallup must physically dial every cellphone he calls, rather than have a computer to do it — increasing the cost of polling enormously.

 

(Snip)

 

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What do The Polls mean...pretty much nothing......except to lazy reporters/pundits/talk show hosts.