No single poll should be taken all that seriously
good, bad, or indifferent. Not only are polls simply a snapshot but they are a fuzzy snapshot at that. All polls have a MOE which means that 95% of the time the true proportion of voters supporting Obama if a poll says he is at 50% is between 46.5% and 53.5% if the MOE is 3.5%. But what is relevant here is the other 5% of the time. The other 5% of the time the true proportion could be above 53.5% or under 46.5%. Similarly if a poll shows Obama at 45% and Romney at 49% there is a 95% chance that Obama's true support is between 41.5% and 48.5% with a 5% chance of it being above 48.5% or below 41.5%. In other words, even if Pew did everything right in their poll, 5% of the time they can get a poll stating what theirs states even with Obama still being at 50%. We have had several, way more than 20 polls, so eventually we are going to see a bad poll.
At this point we have no idea if this is a bad poll or not. If it was then future polls will show it by being radically different. If it instead is the start of a trend, then future polls will show that too. In polls, it is the trend that matters. So no matter if a poll is good, bad, or ugly, just take it with a grain of salt. But if the trend is good, bad, or ugly, then the truth is likely the same.
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rocktivity
