Although I will be the first to say that defeating Nelson will be quite a challenge, if Harris plays her cards right and hires the right people (combined with some campaign appearances from Jeb Bush), he could put up a good fight.
Yeah, that sounds just as ridiculous
Too many people make too big of a deal of one single poll here, one single poll there.
One poll showing Webb within 12 says close to nothing to me, as does one poll with Katherine Harris within 9.
Give me ten polls with these results and I'll believe them. But not one.
Partially, I think this is because...
a. Most of us here aren't statistics majors, unlike jfern (I did take a course in college, but that's about it)
b. Our own pro pollster, The Vorlon, hasn't been around any to tell the newbies who weren't here in 2004 how to look for things in polling and how to correctly analyze the data we have. Perhaps someone should bump those old threads up sometime soon (like you Jake)
Good points, but you don't have to be a statistics major to understand polling. I mean, conducting it seems next to impossible to me from what I've read about it, but analyzing it after-wards I don't think requires THAT much knowledge.
But knowledge of statistics is one of the sorriest chapters in human affairs. People can misinterpret statisticst in truly amazing ways...