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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (46998)	11/9/2010 11:19:17 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I call a 'poll' a scientifically-selected sub-set of a larger target population, That is not one of the common definitions of the word poll. One common definition is an election. Another, even more common one is a sampling of opinion or preference, whether or not its scientific, and election qualifies by that definition of poll as well. If poll meant "scientific poll", you wouldn't need the additional terms "scientific poll", and "unscientific poll". Some poll a blogger or political web site puts up, or put up as a thread poll on SI, with no attempt whatsoever at a random sample is still a poll. You can denigrate unscientific polls all you want, most of them (but not so much elections) are highly distorted and unreliable. But "they shouldn't be relied on" doesn't equal, imply, or suggest, "they are not polls".