[Revolting cat!]

OK, so we say that the bias, or sampling should reflect the most recent turnout numbers to get most accurate results. But then, turnout varies from election to election, as you point out, and is not going to be in 2012 like 2008 or 2010, which in turn tells me what I’ve always thought that is that these polls are in the end more or less worthless.

[muawiyah]

polls are not magic. on the other hand i think Romney was actually making his money playing around with Parrondo's Paradox. it has many of the fundamental characteristics of polling, but if there are too many users in the game it will fail simply due to loss of cash ~ and inability of the banks to deal with the overloads that happen some time.

A good case can be made that folks played with derivatives following parrando's paradox and endedup busting the world financial system.

I"ll tell you this if I"d made a few hundred mill doing that you'd never get to see my tax returns.

[MNJohnnie]

Yep pollsters are busy scrambling around trying to figure out how to poll given the technological changes in phones, demographic changes, party registration changes etc.

Basically they are ALL making just making their best guess about turn out.