Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

I have been complaining for years that polls are completely worthless (and that goes for surveys and most marketing data collected in online forms and all that crap). I know about the statisticians and the sample size and the correlations, etc, but I have always simply said that you cannot rely on what people tell you they might do in the future (people lie intentionally). Even if polling companies were 100% accurate in recording what they were told (which they likely arent) and if polling questions were 100% neutral (leaving out all Republican and Democratic polls, \"Should John McCain and his illegitimate black daughter be chosen as the Presidential candidate to run against the Socialist Flip Flopper that shot young men in loincloths in the back!\") so as to garner a useful result, even then, you still have the human factor (and I am aware statisticians think they can account for this but I dont buy it).

And above and beyond just the normal fallibility of polls we also get reports that popular polling companies just make shit up.