What are polling "internals"

Welcome back Michael - it's been an interesting day. Polling "internals", as they have become known, reference the full details of a poll that include all of the questions. All the media covers in a poll, for the most part, is the horse race question. If you look, most polls have upwards of 30 questions that they ask people, and we generally see only one or two of the results. In addition, the full poll generally includes a lot of back data. For example, if the same question has been asked by the poll for a couple of years (or weeks), you can watch as the numbers move. You can then look at the date that they moved and try and ascertain what caused the move. Was it a post convention "bump" or is something more at work? Internal polls, by contrast, are those polls conducted by the campaigns themselves which generally are viewed as not being objective and therefore not as reliable as a poll conducted by an independent third party like the media. The good news for amateur poll geeks like me is that most media organizations now have the full poll results on the Web sites.

I too will probably be blogging the night away, kicking into my TiVo and watching the McGreevey coverage on Nightline (it was the topic for the full half hour) as well as Aaron Brown's Newsnight coverage (it was the top story). Maybe a little Jon Stewart as well, where you guessed it, it was the top story. There was a little complaining that I didn't hit the CA decision first, but I stand by my belief that the McGreevey story is more important and more significant than anything that has happened since the Mass. decision. (Full text of McGreevey's speech from the NY Times.)