A recent CBS poll showing that the President's approval ratings had slipped to 35% was investigated by Dartblog with not-so-surprising revelations:
"259 Republicans were surveyed. 326 Democrats. (Already unacceptably
inconsistent with the national makeup.) And then an astonishing 351
“Independents”. That, of course, isn’t all. Savvy surveyors need to weight
their data in order to make the results more accurate. In CBS’ case,
this is done by cutting 36 of the Republican responses off the top, and
leaving the Democrat responses intact. This isn’t the regularly shifty
‘party self-identification’ factor. The data comes from a table which, presumably,
reflects party registration. And even if the numbers are PSI, they are still far removed from reality. The net result: a political poll consisting of 34.8% Democrats,
23.8% Republicans, and 41.4% Independents. And President Bush’s “lowest”
approval rating ever."
Doesn't do much to validate the reliability of polling. CBS, notwithstanding.
