Early poll gives Kerry the edge in final debate
 

TEMPE, Arizona (CNN) -- Sen. John Kerry appeared to gain more momentum heading toward November 2, easily beating President Bush in the third and final debate, a poll taken late Wednesday night suggests.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup snap poll taken immediately after the presidential debate found that respondents gave a significant edge to Kerry over Bush, 52 percent to 39 percent.

The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

The numbers were similar to the results of a poll taken the night of the first debate September 30 in Miami, Florida. That night Kerry was favored by a 53 percent to 37 percent margin.

Kerry and Bush were almost even in the second debate on October 5, with the numbers falling within the margin of error.

The respondents Wednesday were 511 registered voters who watched the debate. Their political affiliations broke down as 36 percent Republican, 36 percent Democratic and 28 percent independent.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...oll/index.html

As someone who worked in politics, let me clue you in to something. If a pollster has talent, he doesn't work for a large polling firm like Gallup. He sets up practice, and bills candidates $100,000+ per campaign. I'm sure that whoever is doing the polling for Bush and Kerry is billing out in the million+ dollar range.

What does this mean? All of the polls that are released for public consumption are almost worthless. They're run by recent grads, or by people without the talent to establish a private practice.

*nod* We went over the research practices of the presidential polls in my Empirical Research class- the sampling of the first-after-the-debate polls are not reflective of the population atlarge. Wait a week and more reliable polls will come out with a larger sample-size that meets more parameters than political affiliation.