Biased Polls for Obama Create a "Bandwagon" Effect

William Tate at the American Thinker shows how liberal media skew polls in an effort to create a bandwagon effect for their candidate and to "lead" voters. These tactics include an oversampling of Democrats which bias the results.

He writes:

In case you doubt the impact that a media poll can have, consider this from an independent study following the 2004 presidential election:
"During presidential elections, poll results frequently are presented in the news. Reporters use these polls to tell the public what it thinks about the presidential candidates. We argue that polling results tell the public what it should think about the presidential candidates as well."
- Bruce W. Hardy and Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Also:

Polls are manipulated in a number of ways, including question wording, the order in which questions are asked, and how respondents are chosen. Rebecca Goldin, Ph.D, points out in an article at www.stats.org: "One of the big issues is who is sampled. Gallup is currently listing two polls, one 'traditional' poll of likely voters, which consists of those respondents who have previously voted, and an 'expanded' likely voter pool, consisting of respondents who are likely to vote but have not necessarily voted in a prior election. One could argue that those who didn't vote in the last election are unlikely to be voters this time around -- but there have been record numbers of new voters registering, and substantial evidence that young people are enthusiastic about voting in this election.

Perhaps their voices should count in the polls (in both cases, Gallup reports an Obama lead -- but the amount of the lead differs significantly)."

Pollsters acknowledge that they are oversampling among three demographics that the Obama campaign is targeting: young people, minorities and Democrats. It's entirely possible that there will be high turnout among those groups, despite traditionally low turnout among the former two, but it's also possible -- maybe even likely -- that this higher turnout could be offset by the Bradley effect.

Read it all here.

In other words, polls can be intentionally biased and undoubtedly are in this election, to create a false air of inevitability for an Obama win, with a discouraging effect on Republicans, Republican turnout and donations to the McCain campaign.

Don't listen to the polls. The only one that counts is on November 4th.