Can We Trust Internal Polls?

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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October 27, 2009

Can We Trust Internal Polls?

Mark Blumenthal: "Let's be clear: It is always sensible to treat sponsored, internal surveys with extra skepticism when they are publicly released. Political scientists that have studied public polls (examples here and here) find that partisan surveys typically show a an average bias of 2 to 4 percentage points favoring the sponsoring party. One reason for this phenomenon is that most internal polls never see the light of day. Campaigns typically choose to share only those polls showing good news, not bad."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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October 27, 2009