He's alive; he's a straight shooter. Clark, Kerry and Edwards are frauds. I voted for Dubya and I'm voting for him again... but I'm tellin ya that if Gore had half Dean's charisma, he'd be President.

The published error margins assume internal validity, and are only meant to cover the inference to the larger population. Without internal validity, the error margin is unknowable.

Polls are better than nothing, but not by much.

Multiple treatment interaction is a threat to EXternal validity, not internal. Public opinion have all manner of problems but those taken this close to an election are markedly better than nothing.

All polls have problems predicting very, very close elections, as both the 2000 and 2002 elections were. Even if everything was perfect, 3-4% is a wide margin if the results are within it!

Point, but I was thinking of the way everything suddenly shifted in '02, just before the election. Granted, that particular blindsiding had other factors - I remember a constant reiteration that superior Democrat GOTV procedures in and of themselves would be enough to gain seats, and never mind why - but the last-second shift surprised people.

Something for the Republicans to bear in mind for 2004, actually.

It makes more sense to me that multiple treatment interaction would be a threat to internal validity, since the interaction would affect the results of my sample. I'll check it out tonight.

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