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And there are a lot of places where no party registration is necessary at all. I've lived in Michigan and now in Indiana, neither requires party registration - I even voted in the Democrat party ticket for the primary (no point voting in the Republican primary since by then it was McCain, Governor Mitch Daniels was unopposed on the Republican ticket and there are no Indiana Senate seats up for election this year)
For that matter... I wonder how much of that comes from party affiliation changes from things like Operation Chaos?
Basicly, the sample size is determined to equate to certain margins of error, and you have to understand the assumptions that underlie that calculation. The most questionable assumption is that the population of American voters is homogenous with the population of polling participants - most obviously, it is not because many Americans won't participate in polls.
For that reason, I believe the uncertainty of polling is grossly understated. But if the uncertainty was more realistic, it'd be hard to be in the polling business... Or at least hard to be honest in the polling business, it'd certainly still be worth it to be in the polling business for purposes of influencing the result.
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