By the numbers...

I was reading a post on Facebook last night from one of the persistant grumblers unhappy with the results of the recent elections. The complaint stated that "reliable polls" had Romney and Obama in a dead heat with less than a 1% difference between them. "Reliable polls". Interesting. Just a day or two previously, I heard an interview with someone connected with "The Daily KOZ" stating that the numbers they had come up with were within spitting distance of the actual results... unlike the numbers generated by the so-called "reliable polls". Something the person from the KOZ suggested that the polling data was tweaked around a bit to suit the needs of the people reading the polls. It ain't the first time nor is it the last time that such shennanigans have been done. My workplace has a yearly "poll" called the Employee Opinion Survey. The objective of the EOS is to tell the company how well their management is doing. A good idea, yes... but there is the same problem that the "reliable polls" had in connection with the data presented to Mr. Romney. Many of the participants and/or the presenters tend to tell what the audience wants to hear rather than what the audience needs to hear. Nobody wants to tell His Majesty that he's not wearing any clothes. I am likely to find no meaningful changes as a result of an EOS which may have been skewed by people who were being polite. I knew this going in and am therefore not outraged by the response generated by the pollsters and posted on the break room wall. I'm sorry that the people who were mislead by fairy-tale numbers are so upset at the results... but on the other hand, remember the headline shown by Harry Truman back in 1948- Dewey Defeats Truman! Same deal, different era. Be Seeing You!