On Polls: Completely Worthless

As I’ve talked about before, Iowa is pretty well unpredictable as it all depends on who shows up on Caucus Night and the process of coming out to vote is a lot different than what you tell a pollster, as going to vote requires an hour + committment. So polls have little predictive power in Iowa, but some polls are more worthless than others. Example: this LA Times/Bloomberg poll which is being cited quite a bit.

With polling, as you’re using a smaller number (people polled) to represent a larger number (people who will vote on Caucus night), the larger and more representative your sample, the lower your margin of error. This LA Times/Bloomberg poll has a margin of error of +/- 7% on the Republican side making it close to totally use. The reason? It only surveyed 174 likely Republican voters! 174! Wow, two media organizations wasted a ton of money doing a poll that tells us absolutely nothing about the state of the race.

Update: Captain Ed pretty much agrees.