… While our desire for lots of government programs but low taxes is documented, current polling practices are at least slightly to blame for the fact that politicians feel the need to fulfill all of the public’s “wishes.” What politicians see is that the public supports all of these programs. […] Read more »
Facebook Offers New Windows Into Social Conversation
Facebook is releasing two new search tools on Monday designed to give news organizations — and potentially, marketers — more insights into the real-time social conversation occurring on Facebook, particularly around television shows, big news and sporting events. One of the new tools will allow news organizations to use keywords […] Read more »
Top Pollster Gallup Is Jolted By The Innovator’s Dilemma
… Gallup’s troubles can be summed up in three words: the innovator’s dilemma. That term, coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, describes the sickness that ensues if you fixate on your high-end customers and ignore the market’s low end. Cheap, new methods seep in, eventually disrupting a whole […] Read more »
Panel Discussion: Public Opinion Polls
Polling experts talked about the results of a Kantar study of public views on their perceptions of opinion polls. Topics included perceptions of bias, the accuracy of polls taken via the Internet versus home phones and cell phones, and how the polling process may change in the near future. [cont.] Kantar / C-SPAN Read more »
Three in four Americans see public opinion polling as biased
… Three out of four Americans perceive polling to be biased. This is the case across all demographic subgroups with little variance. (Q15A) Americans particularly distrust the results of polls from candidates, political parties and automated voice recording firms, but news media polls don’t inspire widespread trust, either. (Q17A) While […] Read more »
Respecting the Science
Some folks – perhaps only stats nerds like yours truly – noticed this item in the press last week: “Second-Quarter G.D.P. Revised Sharply Higher … Government statisticians gave the American economy a lift Thursday when they sharply revised their calculation of the nation’s second-quarter growth to an annual rate of […] Read more »