The Official GOP Debate Thread

[BmorePat87]

(08-07-2015, 11:24 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: You know exactly what I am talking about, polls can be manipulated by question structure.   There are some better than most.   But to pretend that these polls are without bias is a little ridiculous.   That's all i am saying.    

Perfect example is the last election.  Some had Romney winning because in polling they didn't count on the youth vote because it's so erratic.   Obama campaign did because they knew how many voters they farmed.

How is asking "who would you vote for" biased? I understand how some questions can be phrased in a way to lead voters, but that's why we scrutinize professional polling to eliminate that. 

Also, you're giving an example of hypothetical poll not being completely representative of the voter turnout population, which has nothing to do with being biased but more to do with not being able to guess the turnout. 

If we look at independent polling for 2012, you'll see that none had Romney winning beyond the margin of error:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html

However, to get back to what we were actually discussing (real polls versus online polls), I have to imagine that a voter poll from Breitbart or Drudge would have had Romney winning by more than what these independent polls had. Why? Because those who frequent those sites are predominately conservative. Likewise, a DailyKOS poll would have been far more in favor of Obama.