And, believe it or not, people do sort of tell the truth when they are asked how likely they are to vote, and to do other civic-minded things. Not perfectly, of course, but enough so that a pollster can work with the data.

(One of the less-discussed problems of polling is that many people will answer questions even when they have no opinion. There was a famous example of that in the late ’40s or early ’50s, when a pollster included a question on a fake bill in Congress. Large minorities were willing to say that they were in favor or opposed to this nonexistent bill.)

When Dinesh D’Souza is stopped by passersby for a photograph in Greenwich Village, the skies are not as clear as they seem for Obama.

http://legalinsurrection.com/

(posted 9/12/12 @ 9:07)

“What went on in the minds of those Americans . . . that made it possible to betray their country? Did none of them suffer a crisis of conscience?

The question presupposes that whoever asks it has still failed to grasp that Communists mean exactly what they have been saying for a hundred years: they regard any government that is not Communist, including their own, merely as the political machine of a class whose power they have organized expressly to overthrow by all means, including violence.

Therefore the problem of espionage never presents itself to them as problem of conscience, but a problem of operations. . . .

The failure to understand that fact is part of the total failure of the West to grasp the nature of its enemy, what he wants, what he means to do and how he will go about doing it.

It is part of the failure of the West to understand that it is at grips with an enemy having no moral viewpoint in common with itself, that two irreconcilable viewpoints and standards of judgment, two irreconcilable moralities, proceeding from two irreconcil­able readings of man’s fate and future are involved, and hence their conflict is irrepressible.”

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/remember_the_911_jihad_terror_attacks.html#ixzz26E33uVgl

“The only thing that has saved the republic is the fact that lots of idiots don’t vote. That’s a very good thing.”

Amen, brother…amen, amen!

Then there is the report that less than 10% of those solicited this year.

And finally I’ve read on some conservative blogs that respondents are deliberately lying when polled.

Polls do little to inform.They do go a long way in the direction of agenda driven propaganda.

Drudge is reporting that the ABCNewsWashPost poll that shows O@49% and R@48%
surveyed 33% democrats and 23% republicans…

That’s how heavily they have to weight the poll in favor of the democrats to give Obama a one point lead.

The article has a link to the actual questions asked.