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  Strategic Vision Ends Year In Deep, Deep Hole
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Parent(s) PollingFirm 
ContributorArmyDem 
Last EditedArmyDem  Dec 21, 2009 02:49pm
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CategoryCommentary
MediaMagazine - National Journal
News DateMonday, December 21, 2009 08:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionThe Embattled Polling Company Has Failed To Document Or Even Stand Up For Its Numbersby Mark Blumenthal

Monday, Dec. 21, 2009

It was, without doubt, the strangest polling story of the year.

In September, controversy swirled around public affairs and polling company Strategic Vision LLC following a rare censure from the American Association for Public Opinion Research and accusations of fraud from blogger Nate Silver. Yet the ensuing silence from Strategic Vision and its CEO, David Johnson, is even more troubling than the initial story.

I devoted a column to the subject three months ago, but here is a brief recap:

Strategic Vision LLC -- not to be confused with the highly respected research company Strategic Vision Inc. -- has released results from over 170 purported pre-election polls since 2004. Johnson told The Hotline three years ago that the company conducts surveys using live interviewers at two Florida call centers.

AAPOR requested information about two Strategic Vision polls in New Hampshire and Wisconsin along with those of 21 other organizations as part of a lengthy investigation of polling errors during the 2008 primaries. A year and a half later, after Strategic Vision failed to provide even cursory information about its response rates and weighting procedures, AAPOR issued a public statement in which it "raised objections" about Strategic Vision's failure to disclose "essential facts" as mandated by its Code of Professional Standards and Ethics.

(Disclosure: I'm an active AAPOR member and served on the AAPOR's Executive Council from 2006 to 2008.)

Shortly after AAPOR released its statement, Silver reacted by asking, rhetorically, whether Strategic Vision was "actually polling anyone at all." He proceeded to crunch some numbers and found a pattern in the trailing digits of the percentages reported in Strategic Vision polls indicating a "possibility of fraud."
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