Those Wonderful Polls
Posted by Mark Noonan
I've been saying this for quite a long time - from Tom Elia over at The New Editor:
<<< The Wall Street Journal's "Number Guy," Carl Bialik, writes: (emphasis added)
Sixty years after its founding, a key association of professional pollsters is dismayed with all the bad survey numbers in the press. In an overdue response, the group is seeking new ways to curtail coverage of faulty research.
A mix of factors, including the low price of online opinion research, corporate sponsorship of surveys and a press eager for numbers-driven stories and charts, has led to the publication of more polling numbers, good and bad. That's confused the public and lessened pollsters' credibility, in the view of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, which includes many of the leading pollsters from universities, the government and industry. "Our ability to conduct good public opinion and survey research is under attack from many sides," the group's long-range planning committee wrote in a May report. As part of its response, Aapor, as the group is known, plans to hire a staffer to spot and quickly respond to faulty polls.
Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Princeton, N.J.-based Gallup Poll, said that an increase in media outlets and in survey research has led to more bad reporting of polls. He added, "We have to have accurate reporting of accurate science. And that's a difficult challenge." >>>
Most of the polls of late are faulty - they have poor demographics, poor quality of questions and are then badly analysed by the MSM. You can listen to the polls all you want, but I'm going to keep consulting what people do rather than what some pollster says they are saying.
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