In the reporting of public opinion, there are few widely-discussed concepts that are as confusing or misunderstood as “likely voters”. Many poll observers think likely voters are a hard and fast classification with clear definitions; this could not be further from the truth. The reality is the construction of likely […] Read more »
Fight the Temptation to Pay Attention to Polls
Public service announcement: For now, you should ignore surveys testing potential Democrat/Republican matchups for the 2016 presidential election. … I realize it’s tempting to believe that these head-to-head polls have at least a little bit of meaningful information in them. Poll numbers are irresistible to political obsessives like me, but […] Read more »
Pew Research Wins! 7th Annual Top 10 Dubious Polling Awards, 2015
“Squeezing Blood Out Of A Turnip” Award … “Remedial Math” Award … “Precedent Trumps Reality” Award CONT. David W. Moore, iMediaEthics Read more »
Do people want to stop Obama’s immigration move? Yes. And no.
Congressional Republicans face a major dilemma in how to respond to President Obama’s executive action delaying deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants. And to complicate that decision, two polls find conflicting results about what the public wants Republicans to do. CONT. Scott Clement, Washington Post Read more »
Why you can ignore that survey showing Americans want to label food containing DNA
Here’s the headline: “80% Of Americans Support Mandatory Labels On Foods Containing DNA. DNA!” Hahaha! Americans are so dumb etc etc. … As the philosopher H. P. Grice noted many years ago, people try to give informative answers. And this leads to problems when you try to directly interpret the […] Read more »
Here are some red flags to fishy polling, on carbon taxes in particular
… Don’t you love it when politicians battle over policy by citing polls that purport to show the American public is on their side? … We want to use this exchange over the Keystone XL pipeline as an opportunity to help readers — and politicians tempted to cite them — […] Read more »