Posted on 06/09/2015 5:38:56 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
When Nate Silver, the undisputed king of election forecasting, declares that "The World May Have a Polling Problem," it's time to take notice. Why are public opinion polls increasingly proving unreliable?
It seems clear that two things could be happening. Either those who agree to cooperate with the pollsters are unrepresentative of the population, or they are deliberately lying to pollsters about their preferences.
Why on Earth would either of those, or both, be happening?
Because there are so many polls in the field that few "normal" people are willing to answer questions honestly, leaving responses to oddballs or those eager to have a little fun at the expense of the pollster.
Can you blame them? Growing up in the 1970s and '80s, I never recall our household receiving calls from pollsters. Polls started to become a little more common in the 1990s. But in the past decade or so, they've exploded. I don't just, or even primarily, mean calls from professional political pollsters, though there are certainly more of those, including a lot more "push" polls, in which a person (or, more often, a recording of a person) on the phone asks questions not to gauge your opinions, but to shape them in the direction of a particular candidate or party.
But that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I call Comcast to discuss an issue on my bill, and before I reach a human being I'm asked if I wouldn't mind answering a few questions at the end of the call. I take the car in for an oil change, and I receive an email a day later to ask me a few dozen questions about my customer experience — and then a phone call a few days after that,
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
Inaccurate probably because conservatives are refusing to answer the pollsters questions because they no longer want to give pollsters information for Dems to use against the country.
The article is pathetic. The reason polls have come up clunkers is the increasingly condescending, hateful and belligerent treatment of conservatives by the elite media.
There has been far too many cases in recent days where previously protected political opinions have been dug out by unscrupulous partisan fanatics and used to punish the opinion holders.
So, supposed someone calls you on the phone and says he's XYZ polling company and wants your opinion about gay marriage, whether your support Obamacare, or if you have any Tea Party connections?
I'd like to think I'd answer the questions honestly, but some elderly Conservative living alone in a Democrat stronghold might be a bit more careful. And then, there's the IRS.
Certain political opinions have become dangerous in this day and age. The only safe place to express them is the ballot box — and maybe not even then.
Because they are done by leftists trying to guide voters in the direction they want them to go.
Skewed samples, skewed questions, skewed results.
The only answer to questions of this type is ‘That’s confidential’
No.
Blame the sorry state of the education of the average voter, particularly the delusional ones with college degrees, devoid of any clue of science, mathematics, logic or common sense.
They are oblivious to the easy manipulation of the language to get the desired results.
Most "polls" are PR companies in "science" costumes.
Who the hell answers the phone any more? Polls that are not representative are not going to be accurate. And if you cannot reach people, you are not being representative.
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