Political Polls: A Cautionary Tale

The next time you hear a reporter ask an elected official about some poll showing "the mood of the nation," or the next time you think that an election result might be fraudulent because it's contrary to an exit poll (which, we're repeatedly told, are hyper-accurate), consider this story:

The owner of DataUSA Inc., a company that conducted political polls for the campaigns of President Bush, Sen. Joe Lieberman and other candidates, pleaded guilty to fraud for making up survey and poll results...

According to a federal indictment, Costin told employees to alter poll data, and managers at the company told employees to "talk to cats and dogs" when instructing them to fabricate the surveys...

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Chang said on several occasions when the company was running up against a deadline to complete a job, results were falsified. Sometimes, the respondent's gender or political affiliation were changed to meet a quota, other times all survey answers were fabricated.

A note here, to forestall some potentially frothing comments: I'm not going to say that 95% of the country loves George Bush or that most Americans think the Iraq war is going swimmingly. But I'm one of those that has learned to take whatever the press tells me with a grain of salt, especially if it's presented to me in easy-to-digest numerical form.

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Polling, Polls, Pollsters, Politics, Fraud, Salt