Wirt Atmar wrote:
> For all of these reasons, I would, at the moment, tend to trust the AOL poll
> as much as I do any professional polling organization -- but for only the
> moment. If it should ever come to be regarded as a "bellweather" predictor, I'm
> sure that it would immediately come under attack as each group attempts to
> distort its results.
>

A new method of polling needs to be validated against other techniques
and real elections before we know anything about its accuracy.  Just
claiming that there's no obvious source of bias is not nearly enough.

The same things could have been said about the famous Literary Digest
poll of 1936, which predicted Alf Landon beating Roosevelt by a large
margin.

Among the problems with online polls is that there are organized
campaigns to distort the results of these polls, e.g.
http://jamesb3.dailykos.com/story/2004/6/25/221947/606
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_06_13_atrios_archive.html#108740203354851110
I could find many other examples if I searched longer.

Finally, you don't need to look at these self-selected polls when there
is reliable polling available:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
It also has Kerry ahead, but by a much smaller margin, 322 to 205
Here are past results
http://www.electoral-vote.com/trend.html

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