| Sumario: | This article discusses the need to educate journalists about reporting on political polls. The subject of political polls has moved front-and-center, with distrust and misunderstanding rampant among and between journalists, polltakers and politicians. One problem is the gamesmanship that partisans play. Anoher is that most journalists and not a few politicans, simply do not understand public opinion research. As a consequence the public is often misled. All pollsters agree that primaries are the most difficult elections to deal with. Doctor George Gallup sees them as so dangerous for the pollster that he will not even conduct them. Newsweek asked him to, but he refused. In his book, The Sophisticated Poll Watcher's Guide, he says: "The record of polls in primary elections is so bad that the sophisticated poll watcher will pay little attention to them or make allowance for large errors, if he does." Polling experts also are dismayed by the way journalists report on polls, indicating they say, how poorly most journalists understand what polls are for. Harrison of Becker Research tells how an article in the New York Times tried carefully to delineate a poll's findings, but the headline negated that by putting one candidate ahead of another, when normal sampling error would make such a conclusion shaky.
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