It's strange how people use polls. The notion that you can take one poll (by it's very nature an snapshot of a limited moment in time), and extrapolate that into all sorts of things. It's strange how polls that agree with, or support people's prejudices, biases, opinions, or beliefs, take on much greater significance that polls that don't. It's strange how polls that ask a limited number of questions, or only ask about 1 thing (or side of an issue), might not give the entire story.
For example, I'm sure that it is possible to find a poll that asserts that a majority of people support X. Then you look at other polls that indicate that while Americans might support X in some fashion, they also don't support X 100% or without restrictions.
Polls can be interesting, they can be helpful, but they can't measure Truth.
5 comments:
Polls should always be regarded as suspicious, because of who's doing the polling, how the questions are posed, who is the targeted group of people of the poll, how many are polled. The best poll continues to be elections. Prior to the perverse rejecting the will of the people in favor of finding sympathetic judges, eleven states had the question of same sex marriage on their ballots at election time. They all voted against the idea by margins exceeding 60%. That's when they went to the courts, but obviously in each of those eleven states, a few more than the typical 1000-2000 people were polled. Despite the arguments regarding "polling science" 1000 people do not represent the nation or even a single state, especially if they're weighted toward one side of the ideological divide more than the other...which is the case far too often.
I think polls have a place in the public discourse. Where I have a problem is when you hear people ho act like polls represent any sort of larger, objective Truth. They are limited snapshots of a specific moment in time, and are only as good as the questions asked, and the honesty of the respondents. For example, most polls that some plurality or small majority of people in the US support abortion in some general fashion. Yet when you look at more specific polls, you find that very few American's support 3rd trimester abortions, and that most support at least some restrictions on abortion. But people take these vague, broad, general polls, and try to make it seem like the vast majority of the US supports unrestricted abortion until birth. It's simply bullshit.
Even some of the green energy polls. I might support multiple "green" energy measures, but I'm not stupid enough to think that we can magically eliminate nuclear and carbon based fuels overnight. Nor am I stupid enough to think that government mandates are the best way to make progress in the energy sector.
It's not polls, that are the problem. It's people who act like polls are more than they are, and ignore polls that don't conform to their narrative.
Agreed. It's really shameful how they're pushed as a means to persuade. It's the Bandwagon Fallacy.
I think it's a little more nuanced than that, but yes, to the extent that polls are twisted, misused, or manipulated to push a false narrative I agree.
I mean with regard to how the results are used, especially by those pushing nonsense. The polls suggest a majority opinion so long as no one looks at the details. When someone, say a Dan Trabue, points to a left leaning result of a poll, that's all that matters and damn it, don't look at the details of the poll except that it's supposed to represent the majority. Bandwagon.
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