If you look at previous polls. So based on that this poll would have been seen as positive for kerry at the time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/sunday/whats-the-matter-with-polling.html?_r=0

OVER the past two years, election polling has had some spectacular disasters. Several organizations tracking the 2014 midterm elections did not catch the Republican wave that led to strong majorities in both houses; polls in Israel badly underestimated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strength, and pollsters in Britain predicted a close election only to see the Conservatives win easily. What’s going on here? How much can we trust the polls as we head toward the 2016 elections?

Election polling is in near crisis, and we pollsters know. Two trends are driving the increasing unreliability of election and other polling in the United States: the growth of cellphones and the decline in people willing to answer surveys. Coupled, they have made high-quality research much more expensive to do, so there is less of it. This has opened the door for less scientifically based, less well-tested techniques. To top it off, a perennial election polling problem, how to identify “likely voters,” has become even thornier.

...

We are less sure how to conduct good survey research now than we were four years ago, and much less than eight years ago. And don’t look for too much help in what the polling aggregation sites may be offering. They, too, have been falling further off the track of late. It’s not their fault. They are only as good as the raw material they have to work with.

In short, polls and pollsters are going to be less reliable. We may not even know when we’re off base. What this means for 2016 is anybody’s guess.

Cliff Zukin is a professor of public policy and political science at Rutgers University and a past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Watch the wave that upsets the steamship Hillary....