Poll-popping

Salon gives obsessive poll watchers a reality-check on the plethora of political polls. (You have to watch a short ad to read the article.)

Want the Cliff's Notes?

1. Pick your pollsters based on past performance. Past defined as the 2000 race, which may not be much to go on. Zogby, Democracy Corps, and Fox/Opinion Dynamics are the favorites. All were within half a percentage point of the actual result.

¶ Whatever that was.

2. Watch the numbers for registered voters, not those for likely voters. Goes agaist common sense, doesn't it? But Salon says that "[e]ach poll has its own methodology for identifying likely voters, and the calculations are seldom transparent."

3. Watch Bush's approval numbers. An incumbent's approval number is usually their final share of the vote. Undecideds, as we're being told more and more nowdays, tend to break for the challenger.

4. Don't pay too much attention to the national numbers. Focus on the electoral college.

¶ Until the election's over, in any case. Then you'll have just nine numbers to look at.