Mark Blumenthal (editor and publisher of Pollster.com) has delivered a scathing attack on Matt the Douchebag and John the Clown in today's morning status update.
Blumenthal first writes a few lines that the media and even many users on this site would be wise to heed to:
The most important thing to keep in mind about pre-election polls is that they come with random variability built-in. That mostly predictable variation -- known to most of us as "the margin of error' -- comes from interviewing what we hope amounts to a random sample of likely voters rather than everyone that casts a ballot. So, if you look at a batch of new polls every day, the law of random chance guarantees that some polls will show your favorite candidate doing a little better and some will show that candidate doing a little worse. Moreover, one poll in twenty should produce, by chance alone, an odd result that falls outside of the reported margin of error (since that statistic is typically based on a 95% level of statistical confidence).
Follow me after the fold for the couple of gems that Mark Blumenthal has for Matt and John:
Drudge first:
Given the number of new polls we are now seeing every day, it is all too easy to cherry pick one poll -- or easier still, one subgroup in one poll -- that seems to indicate a sudden, seemingly dramatic change and blow it up with a misleading scare headline.
Where the link of course directs to the Drudge Report's Friday headline where the "McCain is actually winning according to Zogby" was featured.
But the next paragraph goes for Zogby, and it's absolutely beautiful:
The best advice I can offer right now, especially to journalists, is to emphasize what most of the surveys are telling us consistently and ignore the odd, contrary result, especially if hyped beyond all recognition by the pollsters themselves. More often than not, that odd "finding" turns out to be meaningless noise. The pollsters that shamelessly hype their results one day, take it back the next, while issuing warnings that important blocks of voters remain "volatile." Hardly. At this point, any such volatility tells us more about shortcomings in the polls than volatility in the voters.
This comes after John the Clown wrote the following lines (some think addressed at Nate Silver aka Poblano at 538.com) in today's report:
A special note to blogger friends: calm it down. Lay off the cable television noise and look at your baseball cards in your spare time. It is better for your (and everyone else's) health."
The fact that Zogby and Drudge are still listened to and even followed by anyone has always befuddled me, but that's American politics I guess.