My God, most of the Democratic leaders here are scared of McCain. As for DOGG, the Michigan exit poll suggests its impact was negligible, at best. Only 5 percent of all GOP voters were African American, and more than 20 percent voted for Bush or Alan Keyes. First, remember these are volatile times, when political attitudes and candidate preferences are in flux, says Harvard's Patterson. Stories that report what happened today are inevitably more accurate than stories predicting what's going to happen tomorrow or in the next primary.
Reporters are trained observers.
But sometimes they're looking at the wrong thing. And some polls are better than others. Tracking polls that measure candidate preference over time will be helpful later in the campaign, when attitudes are more fixed and settled. As a general rule, large-sample surveys done over several days are better in capturing popular attitudes than small sample surveys completed in a single day. But don't expect those big, multi-day polls to capture the most recent changes in candidate preference.