Reader John B. writes in on the
NPR poll:
I will grant you that I am no polling rocket scientist, but a poll of 1000 people across 50 congressional districts? If spread evenly, that means 20 respondents per district, which seems like a very shallow sample from which to predict the vote of the hundreds of thousands of persons in that district. Also, in looking at the ages of the respondents, over 65% were over the age of 40. I do not think this represents the American electorate well, but perhaps it does. I would like to see better data. Finally, 52% were women, which again seems too high in respect of likely voters. Again, I would like to see confirmatory data. Overhanging this all were concerns about "the war", which certainly factored in concerns over the Israeli conflict in Lebanon. This could be a non-issue by November.