Understanding polling

I am the first to admit that I don’t much understand how polling works. One of my most painful memories is of working to get out the vote for Mondale in the presidential election of 1984. I worked that day certain that it was possible he could eke out a win — when all of the polls said otherwise, and all the regular political folk knew it wasn’t going to happen. Still, I’ve found it useful to learn something about polling, and this site does a nice job of trying to explain some of what is involved in political polling.