marvholly
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Post by marvholly on Jul 4, 2014 5:11:19 GMT -5
I fall into the NONE group. If you dig deep enough on ANY question I am sure one can find a 'poll' that supports that position. I can think of at east on poster here in that group.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Jul 4, 2014 10:30:21 GMT -5
Virgil/Jim: i remember seeing a documentary on the subject that suggested that public, large scale polling of the type done by Gallup and others was seen as a way of assisting Democracy by helping people assess (the popularity of) their beliefs in a manner which lead to community action. but reviewing the subject, i can't find any evidence of that on line. so, either the documentary was focusing on one very small corner of the polling world, or it was, sadly, wrong.
point abandoned.
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Lizard King
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Post by Lizard King on Jul 7, 2014 9:36:29 GMT -5
Although the point has been abandoned, and I accept that, it segues into another.
Those of us who watch polls with any degree of rigor understand what terms like weighting and crosstabs mean. We understand that the headline report - "OBAMA WORST PRESIDENT EVER;" "GRIMES TOPS MCCONNELL IN LATEST POLLING" - doesn't necessarily tell us the whole story. We know Rasmussen leans right, and PPP leans left. We know that internet-based polling suffers from sample selection bias. We look into the weeds of a poll to see how the sample of respondents might influence the overall picture, or how it might show something different from the headline. We interrogate the thing.
However, and this is why my interest is what it is, almost nobody bothers with all of that. The vast majority of people read the headline "OBAMA WORST PRESIDENT EVER" and respond to that headline. That headline becomes part of their working knowledge capital, along with their response to it. And the import of that is that, ceteris paribus, the vast majority of people sampled for the next Obama popularity poll will be people who would have taken that headline at face value - and these things are pretty widely reported.
So polling isn't just a way of taking the temperature of the electorate, so to speak; it becomes a narrative in its own right, influencing the electorate. One of the factors affecting consumer confidence, for example, is the average consumer's view of consumer confidence. The potential for positive-feedback loops and tail-wagging-the-dog exists in psephology, and I think that the reportage on it often takes advantage of this to perpetuate simple, impactful, but misleading and inaccurate storylines.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Jul 7, 2014 10:24:49 GMT -5
what you are describing is "push polling".
"would you still vote for John McCain if you knew he fathered a black child out of wedlock"?
the question is totally bogus, but it creates a helpful narrative for those that want to elect someone other than McCain.
but what you are describing above is more of a marketing bias of the media. polls are sold to certain agencies that have an agenda to push. i would posit that the data and the polling are fairly benign. the agencies probably don't even come up with the bylines- they probably leave that up to the purchasers of the data.
the best illustration of this i can think of was the book that came out close to a decade ago now that implied that conservatives gave more to charities than liberals. the study (and the book that went along with it) originally concluded that those who practice religion regularly tended to "tithe" or give regularly to charities. the publishing company, the publicist, and several conservative organizations suggested a more sensational rewrite of that study with different and less accurate conclusions, and, of course, the book became a bestseller, and part of popular culture. but the original study is there for anyone who wants to "disentangle" it from the new narrative- just as the data is there underneath the headlines.
questioning minds will always be able to dissect the data. if the question is "do you trust how data is presented", my answer would be different than the one asked in the OP.
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