Grantcart rules!

If that is the bet Romney can poll in Florida in a slanted poll, he is in trouble.

I'm not falling for Gravis's bs. I'm posting this in Politics 2012 so that you all can see what he's up to.

...PAC is funding Gravis? I'm betting Rove...

Because I think he's being paid to be the lead dog, the point man. And once he lays down the foundation, it gives the other "respected" polls leverage to follow.

a comment at the Sentinel.

ETA; It is moderated.

It's not clear to me that they call or poll anyone.

They seem like a bunch of hucksters.

They are not doing any work under the little black awning that says Gravis Marketing. Doug, and maybe his buddy, are in there playing video games and making paper clip chains.

There are also some critiques that one can render about these polls. Gravis Marketing surveys, for instance, rely on cheap automated interviews. While they are usually more Republican-leaning than the consensus, they also seem to wander about randomly with little rhyme or reason. The Albuquerque Journal poll had a good track record, but it had been something of an outlier before, when it gave Mr. Obama a 5 percentage point lead in New Mexico in September, so his improvement there may simply reflect reversion to the mean.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/oct-14-breaking-the-state-national-poll-stalemate/

The problem with Gravis is that their business is completely lacking in anything resembling a qualification to do political polling, that their founder and staff seem for all the world like con artists. People who are cited for fax spamming and sued for trademark infringement can't really be trusted to provide information that one would accept without verification. The fact that they said they do automated polling does not, for me, reach the level of evidence, absent verification in some other form. Nate Silver was not that cautious, perhaps much to his discredit. He is a person who thinks the numbers will work themselves out. Perhaps, but only given the time.

Gravis was very good at doing one thing: finding the vulnerability in both Silver's personality and his model. His personality flaw is to trust the numbers above intuition or even common sense. The flaw in his model is that it can only reduce the weight of a poll like Gravis given sufficient time. Like all good flim flam operations, Gravis was very good at spotting these vulnerabilities - they came on the scene in August, producing dubious polls, but without the time necessary for Silver's model to deal with them. So now they can say and do whatever they want, and Silver's model accepts it blithely. Silver provides a weak disclaimer, when the fact is these numbers could be made up over beers at the local Orlando watering hole, while these hucksters laugh about Silver's gullibility. The numbers will out, Silver supposes. But probably not until next Spring. Tra la la.

It's a kind of classic con in that it spots the weakest part of the mark's personality.

The meme is that Florida is in the Mitt column. But that's based on Mason-Dixon and Gravis polls, which poll in favor of Republicans.

Except, if you add pollsters who make their calls in Spanish, it changes the whole ball game.

To answer your question, the why is because the Obama campaign will withdraw resources from Florida if they think it's already lost to Republicans. The Repub polls will try to bluff their way into winning Florida.

And it keeps campaign workers motivated, and the voter base fired up.