Polls are supposed to give an accurate prediction (within the MoE) of what will happen on election day. Strategic Vision is well known for giving Bush a generous (3 to 5 points or more) handicap when compared to other pollsters.
Currently, a Strategic Vision poll gives Wisconsin to Bush 49% vs. Kerry’s 44%. What happens on Nov 2 when Kerry wins Wisconsin by 2%? Presumably somebody is paying for these polls. If SV misses the mark by more than twice the MoE, shouldn’t tell somebody that Strategic Vision doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing?
Poll can and often are wrong on election day. But they only give a poll; they don’t guarantee their accuracy to anyone.
If they develop a reputation for being inaccurate, they will lose clients, but it’s possible that Strategic Vision has clients who like the idea of a slightly biased poll. If your candidate is shown to be ahead, sometimes voters for the other candidate don’t show up.
Sure they get busted.
The Voter’s News Service that was owned bby most of the major media outlets (ABC, CBS, CNN, AP, etc.) was closed down after the botched results in the 2000 election and then again botched results in the 2002 off-year elections.
Like any business if you suck at yoru job you usually do not have a job for very long.
Skewed polling is probably worthwhile pre-election to help swing voters that a given candidate is ahead but on the day of voting the more accurate the answer the better and being way off base serves no one.