The American Association for Public Opinion Research, a trade association of pollsters, announced today that it will convene an ad-hoc panel to look into the New Hampshire polling meltdown.
In a statement, Nancy Mathiowetz, the group’s president, equates last week’s failure with 1948’s Truman-Dewey bust. After that historic misreading, the Social Science Research Council convened a panel, which Mathiowetz says “played a key role in restoring public confidence and improving research methodology.” This time around, the goal seems much the same.
Details on the upcoming panel are scant at the moment, but the association promises to review individual pollsters’ in-house investigations and to preserve pre-New Hampshire polling data for future research. Expect more information after the group’s executive council meets this weekend.
A better issue for Dr. Mathiowetz and the Assoc. to examine is the role of polling in the distortion of the electoral process. Not only do predictive polls influence future votes, but the entire polliing process has become a news event itself. How much emphasis is there by the political journalilsts on the substance of the candidate's positions on significant issues? Where can we read about the details of a candidate's platform? We know more than we need to about the opinions of the "experts." We know little about the distinctions between candidates beyond the superficial descriptions given by the press and the supositions made by the polling organizations based upon their psuedo-scientific efforts at prediction of out come.
Posted by Jack
on Mon 14 Jan 2008 at 05:52 PM