The Trunk talked about the

The Trunk talked about the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll in one of his posts today, but he modestly refrained from pointing out that he has dissected that poll and exposed its shortcomings in a series of posts on this site over the last several weeks. The Strib’s poll, which does not follow conventional polling procedures but instead relies on a secret formula to slice and dice the data it collects, has been consistently wrong over a period of years. It has a horrible record, if we assume that its purposes are to accurately reflect the state of the electorate and to predict the outcome of elections. Yet despite its repeated failures, the Strib’s poll has not reformed its methods. It continues to crank out “data” that exaggerate the extent of Democratic support in every race, by a margin of five or more percentage points. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Strib does not intend its poll to be accurate, but rather intends it to support the Democratic Party. If the Strib does not reform its methods in the wake of this year’s debacle, that conclusion will be inescapable.