Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: The future of polling, the NRA's PR machine and more

Elizabeth Wilner/Cook Political Report has important observations of the future of polling:

Elections have consequences for parties'and now, for polling.

An industry accustomed to unquestioned respect that had struggled quietly against its mounting demons for the previous few election cycles is facing an intervention post-2012. A decades-old method of gauging a person's likeliness to cast a vote for president failed. The resulting gap between some pre-election ballot tests and the actual outcome shook those pollsters including the oldest brand in the business, Gallup.

A robopoll'an automated survey involving no person-to-person contact'mirrored the final results as closely as any set of live interviews.

And by offering a shortcut through the glut, Nate Silver and other poll aggregators became what pollsters once were, our national tea-leaf readers, while diminishing the value of accurate individual surveys.

Pollsters, meet Jesus.

Polling is integral to everything we do in politics. A must read.

More Willner, different article:

The likely voter models used by many pollsters to ascertain which respondents are probably going to turn out for an election seemed to conk out in 2012. A new study by one of the industry's most respected professionals, to be accompanied by R&D on a new likely voter model, finds that the mid-20th century vehicle was no match for 21st-century demographics and targeting.

Here's an example from The Fix:

As The Fix's Aaron Blake noted this morning, polls routinely show that the public is in favor of increasing the minimum wage. A Public Religion Research Institute poll in 2010 showed that two-thirds of Americans would like to see the minimum wage at $10 an hour ' including half of Republicans.

The question: Will GOP pay a price for opposing majority's will on pretty much every single major challenge facing nation?
' @ThePlumLineGS via TweetDeck
WaPo on the PR agency behind the NRA:

Ackerman McQueen has managed the NRA's image and helped fight its political wars for more than 30 years. The ad agency played a pivotal role in its transformation from a sportsman's group to one of Washington's most powerful lobbying organizations, shaping a message rooted in uncompromising combativeness, securing its influence inside the NRA and reaping millions of dollars in contracts.

Greg Mitchell:

Daryl Hannah (left)  was one of several prominent folks arrested at the big Keystone XL protest at the White House today.  Others includes Robert Kennedy Jr. and Bill McKibben.   They tied themselves to gate.  And dig this:  "Executive director Michael Brune is the first Sierra Club leader in the group's 120-year history to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience. The club's board of directors approved the action as a sign of their opposition to the $7 billion pipeline, which would carry oil derived from tar sands in western Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast."