CBS coordinated with YouGov to present three “battleground state” panel polls today. The polling methodology is rather peculiar because it’s not random sample polling, but rather targeted specifically to prior respondents of same, albeit earlier, YouGov polling. They fill in the non-repeat respondents from other prior contacted buckets.

The downside to this panel-approach is it’s essentially like taking a focus group and tracking their trend over-time, filling in those who don’t show up for the next interview by reaching out to other focus groups to fill the void. This type of on-line polling is not scientific and prone to flaws and/or manipulation by the interpreter of the data.
The pollster is reaching out to a specific data-set, and in order to achieve the needed total number they need to reach out to ‘known sub-sets‘ within their data-base. In order for this approach to be useful – the integrity of the people gathering the data has to be beyond reproach. (more…)






What Campaign Chief Jeff Roe describes in the