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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs

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To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (47043)	11/9/2010 3:46:26 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 71588

Expert Survey researchers, will criticize internet polls, push polls, etc. as being non-scientific polls. Notice how that term includes the word polls. Its not "not a poll", its an unscientific one. They are often full of contempt for such polls, considering them as having little meaning, even being worthless, or perhaps worse than worthless, because they might mislead people, but none of those criticisms amount to "isn't a poll". Even as a term of art within the polling community, a valid poll selection method is not a requirement for a poll to be a poll. It might be a requirement for the poll to be considered a good poll, or a worthwhile poll, but that's not the same thing. And of course a term is not limited to its application as a term of art within one field. So even if pollsters considered such polls to be "not polls" rather than "useless polls", that wouldn't mean they where not polls. By the standard English definitions of the word (and by the common usage which backs up and is eventually definitive for determining the standard definitions) such unscientific polls are polls.

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