Wow, according to Gallup Obama is really cleaning McCain's clock...
The general-election results are based on combined data from Oct. 5-7, 2008. For results based on this sample of 2,747 registered voters, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.
Or is he? Zogby/C-SPAN/Reuters say...
The survey, including a three-day sample of 1,220 likely voters collected over the previous three days - approximately 400 per day from Oct. 5-7, 2008 - shows that Obama holds a slight advantage amounting to 1.9 percentage points over McCain. This represents a bit of a recovery by McCain, who had been sliding in some polls before his running mate, Sarah Palin, put in a strong performance in her one and only debate performance last Thursday.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but at least one of these polls is an absolute falsehood. Unless you really want to argue the difference between registered voters and "likely voters" amounts to 8.6% the point can't be denied (and lets be honest, if you're registered and willing to sit through a Gallup poll than you're "likely" to vote).
The problem here is that we've come to the point where you just can't trust anyone to be unbiased anymore. Everyone seems to be trying to twist data every which way to make their case. But in allowing that we've lost any truth that statistics can provide. Because, as the above results seem to prove, you just can't trust them to deliver the truth.
I'm against pretty much all government intrusion in the technology industry but I make two exceptions to that rule. The way I see it, the government needs to find a way to use technology to seriously tackle these two issues...
1. We need the ability to identify every individual and reliably poll their opinion on issues. With all the voter fraud, bogus polling, etc... it's time for us to get serious about finding a way to uniquely identify people and get their opinion on things. Even if, and I hate to say this, but even if it requires giving up a little privacy to do it.
2. We need to take the issue collecting raw data and making it available to the public seriously. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a lot of the politics we have in the world could be solved with good, raw data.
Gun Control, for example, is all about the prevention of violence. One side believes people having guns prevents violence the other believes that taking them away prevents violence. So since we have San Francisco, CA (which banned hand guns) and Austin, Tx (which allows people to carry concealed weapons) why not compare them and see? Both are about the same size. So Lets get some data and compare. Solve this once and for all.
In the end, this new world we live in seems to be a place where we are constantly bumping into the issue of determining what information is legitimate and what information is not. Yet we put very little effort into solving that problem. I, for one, plan to spend some serious time thinking about it from this point on.