I have a tepid belief in polls. They can be “rigged” to get the answers you want. Even then there are subconscious biases.
My first beef with polls is that they usually show only percentages: hard numbers lead to a better interpretation. Also they report things like “80% of Republicans believe X” and “20% of Democrats believe X.” Which doesn’t mean much when you don’t know what percent of the population is Republican or Democrat or what they did with the results of the independent voters.
Then there is often mythlogic (yes, I intended that word) as to how the results are interpreted. If 30% of people like X it is assumed that 70% of people don’t like X. This assumption ignores people who don’t care at all about X.
Back in the 1960’s when I was taking a class on such issues. We studied the results of polling to correlate students’ political affiliation with that of their parents. At the time, many students were revolting against “the establishment” and “the man.”
There were two polls conducted.
One asked, “What is your political affiliation?” followed by “What is the political affiliation of your parents?”
The other asked, “What is the political affiliation of your parents?” followed by “What is your political affiliation.”
The same questions were asked; only the order differed, The results of the two polls were different. In the first poll, students were “committed” to their ideology before they had to decide on how to answer the second question.
I have a tepid belief in polls. They can be “rigged” to get the answers you want. Even then there are subconscious biases.
My first beef with polls is that they usually show only percentages: hard numbers lead to a better interpretation. Also they report things like “80% of Republicans believe X” and “20% of Democrats believe X.” Which doesn’t mean much when you don’t know what percent of the population is Republican or Democrat or what they did with the results of the independent voters.
Then there is often mythlogic (yes, I intended that word) as to how the results are interpreted. If 30% of people like X it is assumed that 70% of people don’t like X. This assumption ignores people who don’t care at all about X.Back in the 1960’s when I was taking a class on such issues. We studied the results of polling to correlate students’ political affiliation with that of their parents. At the time, many students were revolting against “the establishment” and “the man.”
There were two polls conducted.
One asked, “What is your political affiliation?” followed by “What is the political affiliation of your parents?”
The other asked, “What is the political affiliation of your parents?” followed by “What is your political affiliation.”
The same questions were asked; only the order differed, The results of the two polls were different. In the first poll, students were “committed” to their ideology before they had to decide on how to answer the second question.