Gallup's Unemployment Numbers Are As Suspect As Are Their Presidential Horse Race Numbners

[DemocratSinceBirth]

monmouth (21,027 posts)
3. I read somewhere it's 7.0%...n/t

Response to monmouth (Reply #3)Fri Nov 2, 2012, 12:22 PM
DemocratSinceBirth (45,272 posts)
4. According To Gallup

That might be a jinx given their suspect accuracy.

[DrToast]

1. Gallups numbers aren't seasonally adjusted

You cannot compare the two.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. I Don't Rely On Anything From Them/nt

[BlueStreak]

3. It seems to me that reality is catching up to Gallup after all these years

They probably never were any better. It is just that there wasn't much competition, and it wasn't all that easy to judge the effectiveness of a pollster.

Today we have lots of people taking polls so the outliers become apparent very quickly, and with millions of people watching this stuff, an inept or biased pollster gets called out pretty quickly.

The whole notion of polling as "science" is bullshit. You cannot accurate represent 120,000,000 voters in a diverse country by having a bunch of minimum wage clerks talk to 400 people, most of whom don't really want to be bothered in the first place.

Gallup had a nice long run conning people into believing they actually had something of value.