Mervin Field, a pioneer in using non-partisan public opinion research to analyze and interpret politics, will be feted, honored and gushed over by friends, colleagues and neighbors on his Marin County hometown turf tonight. …
For many years, California political reporters were pestered and harassed by campaign operatives (and, in big races, by East Coast colleagues) to disclose the dates and times when the Field Poll would be released — closely held information known only to news organizations that paid for subscriptions to the poll — because of its influence in informing and influencing the pre-election opinions of voters.
Field’s once-singular position in the marketplace, however, today has been lost to the nihilistic bedlam of countless polls pushed out non-stop by news outlets, campaigns and cheap, quick-buck artists. Polling pandemonium now blares and echoes across the 24/7 cable and internet news cycles, broadcast, published and ignorantly discussed without regard to quality, methodology or statistical validity, amid the second-by-second eyeballs race to be first, new and buzzworthy. CONT.
Calbuzz