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Sat 18 Sep, 2004 04:38 am
Well, here you have two respected polls, Pew and Gallup. One says one thing, while the other says the opposite:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/17/presidential.polls/index.html
Which leads me to the conclusion that one cannot take political polls very seriously.
What do YOU think? Do you give a lot of credence to political polls? Do you tend to believe the polls which come out to YOUR way of thinking?
Theoretically, if a poll uses a well designed statistical model, and allows for a margin of error, the results should be accurate. So why the discrepancy?
From what I've seen, polls don't mean anything at all and I wonder why anyone pays any attention to them.
Because our guy is winning they mean something. How many times have the left used polls as an example of how badly Bush is poing on A2K?
Ther 1,932 post in the political forum that mentions the word "polls".
McG
I don't know about others, but regardless of who's supposedly winning, I don't pay attention to them.
McGentrix- I hear ya. Some people DO take credence in polls, and each side uses the figures to their own psychological advantage.
I think the polls are mostly used by the politicians themselves, to find out which story is working for them, and which not to tell again.
I'd love to get fbaezer's take.
The only poll that I have any interest in is the one on election day. The rest I ignore.
Both sides will quote polls but it should be as an aside to their argument. No way it can be the entire argument or prediction of who will win. The question is not who uses the word polls but who flaunts them as Gospel. I think a quick check would show which side is the most guily. Not that a poll of A2Kers might show it's ineffective.
(It's "my poll is bigger than your poll," and who knows which one owns a Corvette).
I like the poll that he dancers come down....oops...that's pole......sorry
Firemen also come down poles and who knows which ones are Bi-Polar?
All this sexual innuendo is vague and y'all know if there's anything I can't stand, it's vagueness.
damn lw, what clubs have you been hanging out at?
Our pressure is up due to a hurricane at Baja, Cal.
Where the poll pressure is up is another story.
And to think...
...I was gonna post something like...
..."Hey, the way questions are asked sometimes has a big effect on how the responder replies, and maybe that accounts for the discrepancy."...
...but I thought it was too light and obvious.
But now that yer talkin' about poles rather than polls, well...
...ahhh, maybe I won't post at all.
It just shows how seriously some of us take polls and, no, it's not the Bada Bing! -- it's in New Jersey and fictional.
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