Polls are some sort of Orwellian truth squad to tell you what they want you to believe. Get with the program.
Push polling isn’t designed to get the numbers of support, it is there to plant the seeds of rejection of certain candidates.
Silver just got lucky when the results matched his biases a few times in a row. If there was a random or structural problem with polls, the errors wouldn’t all seem to benefit one side of the political spectrum.
I pretty much refuse to participate.
I consider unsolicited phone polls as potentially dangerous as you don't know who is really calling seeking information about you. It may not really be a poll at all...
The author overlooks the obvious:
There are certain demographic groups to are more likely to have a landline phone, be at home to answer the phone, willing to answer the phone, and willing to answer personal questions posed by a stranger, and do so honestly.
Pollsters claim they can poll these people and apply a secret formula to accurately reflect the opinions of the entire population. But, it is all BS, and has been so for decades.
I have in my conservative book collection Matthew Robinson’s “Mobocracy: How the Media’s Obsession with Polling twists the news, alters elections, and undermines democracy”. I can remember it being mentioned in the book that back in the 1976 election season, poll numbers were only mentioned a very small handful of times. By 1990s and 2000s, polls had become the crack cocaine of political debate and discussion in the media.
Very disturbing portrait in this book, to say the least.
Yet when the ‘respected’ Pew Research Polling states that more Americans are becoming liberal, every one of the hot-air pontificators expanded breathlessly on its importance! This just weeks after EVERY POLLSTER in Great Britain called the May Election WRONG, horribly wrong. It should be a lesson that the error was in favor of the liberal Labour Party but of course there was no bias in that conclusion - right?
polls just like the elections all over the world including the USA are either all bought and paid for or the results are manipulated (digitally) for the “desired” results and true reflections of anyone participating. Hell I doubt if we have had a true legal election since 2004...soros company somewhere in europe counted the votes the last two times...and low and behold it turn out that the elections were both times decided in just a few locations at the very end...at least that was the case in 2012.
I don’t answer polling calls, and if I do accidentally pick up the phone I hang up as soon as I realize what it is. I only answer Amazon polls or other customer polls when I have something to complain about. If I were exit polled (I never have been) I would lie about my choices.
Does that make me a bad data source?
Because the pollsters are increasingly commissioned to steer the outcome instead of just ask a question. and quantify the results.
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.