Yes he can. He's right about that.
A straw poll where candidates pay bribes to acquire votes and internet polling where only people who come to the site to vote are counted are measurements of absolutely nothing. They are entirely meaningless.
Scientific polling is relatively accurate when it comes to voter trends. Who ever has the most momentum in scientific polling going into an election usually wins. Even if a candidate polls in second place, but he has more momentum than the guy in first place, the guy with the momentum usually wins.
The only thing you have to be careful of in scientific polling is the number of "undecided/not sure" voters. The lower the number of undecideds, the more accurate. Usually those undecided voters for the most part go to the guy with the most momentum on election day.
Most of the republican polling out has more than 50% of republican voters as undecided. That makes them extremely unreliable measures by themselves, but you can still measure how much a candidate is rising or falling and that is pretty accurate.
That's music to this President Paul fan's ears!!
straw polls are purchased. they are not scientific.
keep dreaming.
But, no matter how many times you write scientific, it doesn't change the fact that it fails in today's reality.
It's the age of cellphones, and the polls you reference come from landlines during work hours!
I can't remember the last time I seen one of those, honestly.
Here's a few words from some people who know a thing or two about polling;
"I think Paul probably under-polls," said Dave Peterson, interim director of the Harkin Institute of Public Policy at Iowa State and associate professor of political science who assisted with the poll. "His supporters are younger and more likely to reply on a cell phone, so he's probably going to perform better than his polling suggests. His supporters also are dedicated and will likely turn out on caucus night and not change their minds."
Iowa State’s James McCormick, coordinator of the poll, said that while Paul’s lead is small, it may be more solid than it seems.
“What our poll says is that 51 percent of Paul’s supporters say they’re definitely backing him,” said McCormick. “The percentage for the next two candidates is much weaker, at 16.1 for Mitt Romney and 15.2 for Newt Gingrich. Moreover, the percentage of respondents ‘leaning to’ or ‘still undecided’ in their support for these latter two candidates remains high, at 58 percent for Gingrich and 38 percent for Romney. In other words, I’m going to make the case that these numbers are still very soft for those two candidates.”
"Because we surveyed the same likely caucus goers in November [data collected between Nov. 1 and 13], these results do indicate some movement to strengthening the commitment to a particular candidate," McCormick said. "In November, only 16.5 percent indicated that they had definitely committed to a candidate."
WOO HOO!!