KY: Insider Advantage: Beshear Loses Some Steam

[Alcon]

Verily's point is, you can't just look at it that way.  Look at it like this:

5/11 - Brown Analysis - D +6
5/12 - Smith Polling - D +9
5/13 - Jones Research - D +20
...
5/25 - Brown Analysis - R +8
5/26 - Smith Polling - R +9
5/27 - Jones Research - D +8

How are you going to look at it, overall - a Democratic surge, or a Republican one?  A Republican one, even though between the last two polls, it's a Democratic one.  This is generally useful in polls from crappy firms (which Insider Advantage pretty much is).

Extreme example, but I'm sure that you get the idea.

[Alcon]

Verily's point is, you can't just look at it that way.  Look at it like this:

5/11 - Brown Analysis - D +6
5/12 - Smith Polling - D +9
5/13 - Jones Research - D +20
...
5/25 - Brown Analysis - R +8
5/26 - Smith Polling - R +9
5/27 - Jones Research - D +8

How are you going to look at it, overall - a Democratic surge, or a Republican one?  A Republican one, even though between the last two polls, it's a Democratic one.  This is generally useful in polls from crappy firms (which Insider Advantage pretty much is).

Extreme example, but I'm sure that you get the idea.

I get the idea, but you're talking about a difference in weeks at most.  We're talking 3 months here.

The point still stands...you need to also look at adjacent polls, which tell a markedly different story.

[Alcon]

I'd argue you can't necessarily look at a trend anyway, especially when other polls are showing a much different result than this one.

[Alcon]

But you can't look at a trend when the polls are over 3 months apart.

His point is that you can't directly compare the results of two polls done by two polling organizations if one of them has a history of being slanted towards one side or the other compared to every other poll.  Was that one poll showing Casey only up 4 very near the November 2006 election an example of Casey "losing steam"?

Yes, exactly what I meant - and also when one poll is frequently slanted toward sucking.