It has been said that numbers never lie, but statistics do.  A political poll is a relative handful of numbers statistically analyzed and adjusted to yield, hopefully, simple results.  On their best days, polls are educated guesses.  On bad days, polls are outright lies.  The Real Clear Politics National Poll Average has both. For a poll to be reasonably accurate, it needs a relatively large sample size, a good model reflective of the electorate, and it should include only those people likely to vote, AKA likely voters.  The voter model is much more important than either of the other two issues.  Get this wrong, and you can get a really skewed result. One of the basic elements of a voter model is party affiliation.  This Gallup party affiliation poll shows that most voters claim to be independents, and those claiming to be either Republicans or Democrats are pretty evenly split.  If you average the...(Read Full Article)