[AlexM]

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Maybe it means that nobody is very good at polling.

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We have a winner!

Polling is mostly crap since you simply can't measure the preferences of the type of person who chooses to not take the poll. Exit polling is probably the best, but even that doesn't measure the people who just shake their heads and walk on past.

The problem with straw polls is they only measure the most fanatical supporters. Ron Paul almost certainly has more fanatical supporters than any other candidate. People who just "kind of like" a candidate but don't really care a lot and aren't really big into politics aren't going to be voting in a straw poll, and that's most people.

OTOH, polls like Gallup measure only people they call and who choose to answer, and it's been pointed out many times on this forum that Ron Paul supporters are more tech oriented and thus less likely to have land based phone lines to receive calls. It should also be pretty obvious to anyone that collectivists are going to be much more likely to make time to answer a pollsters phone call while individualists are going to be much more likely to hang up, and of course the individualists are all about Ron Paul.

Personally, I'd say if it were possible to make an accurate poll, Ron Paul would probably be around 7%, but I pretty much pulled that number out of my ass. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]