Politics
Out of context: Reply #9106
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The American Assocation for Public Opinion Research, the blogger Nate Silver, and others have raised a serious of questions about Strategic Vision, a polling firm that occasional draws attention for early polls in lightly-polled, competitive state races.
The polling organization -- whose move was extremely unusual -- complained that Strategic Vision refused to share its data, while Silver raised tentative statistical questions.
Details of Strategic Visions polls have long raised flags among pollsters, in part because it refuses -- unlike other pollsters -- to release "cross-tabs" -- the detailed demographic breakdowns of individual polls. A source noted other anomalies to me today. One is that the pollster always reports having called a round number of respondents -- unusual in an industry that typically uses large call centers and winds up -- as casual poll readers know -- with uneven numbers of calls.
Another question is how the firm pays for its polls. Its website lists at least 172 public polls, and at a stated cost of $30,000 a poll, that's an expenditure of more than $5 million -- quite a sum for a small firm.
A third question has to do with the firm's offices. Its website, as recently as last month, listed offices in Atlanta, Madison, Seattle, and Tallahassee -- all of which match the locations of UPS stores, rather than actual offices.