PEW Research reported last May that just about all the random sample pollsters (and even those with pre-selected polling groups) are down to a 9% response rate.
That means if you call 1000 people, you end up with just 90 of them providing you a response.
That's 1 out of 11.
A big part of the problem is that people just don't respond to calls from pollsters ~ after all, being commercial operations they have to send a signal to your phone telling you who they are ~ and you don't respond!
The problem at this point is that minority groups within the population can seize the day and take over the polling results simply by answering the phone.
Here's the way it works. Call that 1000 people your computer sampled for you. Let's say there's a group that's only 5% of the population and they always answer the pollster calls. You will get 50 of them!
. The other 95% only answer and responded at the 9% rate ~ which means they will represent only 8.55% of the total or 86 respondents.
As you can see that 5% now represents 37% of the responses, and the 95% has dropped to a here 63%~
If it's a Presidential preference poll, you'd expect something in the order of 50/50, but here'd you have 63/37!
You could be easily misled into thinking a Romacain was winning and a Gobama was losing.
Gee, that happened didn't it.
This also addresses the reason why Gallup thinks there are 3.4% gays out there ~ they asked all their subjects that question for the last year ~ and of course all the gay guys knew that! The real answer is more like .34% are gay ~ or 1/10 less BTW.
Your analysis or Response Rates is quite accurate.
However, you do not mention the requirement of pollsters to meet every quota cell in the sample universe.
Therefore, if the pollster is conducting a poll in an area where 10% of the population is black female between the ages of 29 and 39 with a college, and living in a household making between 50 and 59 thousand a year, the poll is not complete until that quota cell is filled.
Polling in an accurate science and all you need to do is look at recent elections and you will see that most polls fall within the margin of error.
That accounts for the totally inaccurate polls I’ve seem lately, but not for the decline in morality that I have witnessed in today’s culture..
My own sons recently went through college and came home with views that are vastly different than they were when they left home.. They both told me that the overwhelming, and sole views being accepted in higher education forbids any countervailing attitudes toward Gay, Abortion, Cultural and Religion, will be met with scorn and or banishment..
This punishment was liberally dealt out by the entire academic community, but most surprising of all, was the vehement rejection of any level of civility, and morality, that came from the women and girls in their classes.. The decay that we find in our culture has a foothold in the females among us..
The former buttress within a family against the unholy, our former gatekeepers, are now becoming the perpetrators of evil that has overtaken the culture, and will ultimately signal our decline..
We men are becoming weak and without shame.. Men are not at all blameless, and equally at fault, but the single thread that held the fabric of our society together, were and continues to be, our Mothers.. If and apparently when this seam fails, so well we all...