Some articles tell you something that will always be true, that you will always remember, that might change something in your view of the world. Like this one:
October 2003
The Public Opinion Polling Fraud
from Z Magazine
by Marc Sapir and Mickey Huff
http://www.retropoll.org/polling_fraud_z-mag.htmQUOTE:
The population's apparent consent to the war on terror is virtually manufactured by media and government. Describing and exposing this phenomenon is the focus of Retro Poll. Behind the phenomenon we find that even the best polls, those that use reliable methods, are usually concealing vital truths from the public either by omitting, hiding, or oversimplifying important information, by choice.
Here are some of the details. Retro Poll uses a unique methodology which investigates peoples' background knowledge as well as asking their opinions. This allows an assessment of the extent to which background knowledge or its absence correlates with views about topical issues. We also compare individual's responses on different opinion questions looking for clues. From April 5-20, 2003 more than 30 volunteers, mainly college students in the San Francisco area, polled a random sample of the U.S. population on their knowledge and views concerning Constitutional rights and the War on Terrorism. Of over 1000 people contacted, 215 from 46 states agreed to participate. Detailed results of the poll are reported on the web site.
Like the corporate polls we buy phone lists from a company which randomly generates and sells these lists for surveys and marketing purposes. Of the several hundred Americans one of us (Marc) personally spoke with, about 25-30% agreed to answer the questions. The others either declined or hung up. This isn't surprising. It is commonly accepted in public opinion research that in random samples usually 70% or more of those contacted will refuse to participate. With that single act, the refusers destroy the claim that the poll sampled people randomly. The results of any poll can honestly reflect the views of the general population only if the 70% who refuse to talk have nearly identical views to those who agree to be polled. If there are significant differences, the results can not be said to equate to public opinion.
Polls usually report out a statistical "margin of error" for their results. The margin of error that polls report depends not upon the number of people called but upon the number who responded, the sample size. They usually report a margin of error of about 3% for a sample size of 1000. But this margin of error statistic that makes polls look highly accurate is, in essence, a cover to hide the 70% who refused to participate. Even if 99% refused to participate and we had to speak to 100,000 people to find 1,000 who would talk with us, the margin of error statistic would still be reported as the same 3%. It would be hiding the problem of non-responders. So the margin of error statistic is not only inappropriate in this circumstance; it suggests a level of certainty that is fraudulent.
READ IT ALL AT
http://www.retropoll.org/polling_fraud_z-mag.htm-------------
MY COMMENT:
The most significant opinion poll finding in history, possibly the only significant finding, is the common knowledge among pollsters and political scientists that an average 70 percent of those approached for surveys refuse to participate or conclude them. That is the average of all opinion surveys, across the board, and no one knows it better than the pollsters, who never release these figures for individual surveys.
The science used to determine the opinions of the 30 percent who agree to be polled is dubious, but no science can reliably tell us what the 70 percent think.
The 30 percent of those approached who choose to participate in a given poll are not a random sampling of the population; they are a random sampling of the 30 percent of the population who tend to participate in surveys when asked. That's a big difference.
It should be self-evident that the people at one extreme, the sort who angrily hang up as soon as they realize the caller is only a pollster, are going to have different personalities, tastes and habits than the people at the other extreme, the sort who are actually happy to be called by a stranger.
This alone should disqualify the validity of most opinion polls.
Imagine if every report on an opinion poll you read were to begin with the truth: "Of <1000> people called, <700> hung up. Of the other <300>,
percent believed this, percent believed that." How seriously would you take polls, once you had read that 10 or 100 times?
Or this: "The phone list used for this poll, purchased from a marketing company, obviously did not include people who are never home, or who don't have a phone, or who live in a household where someone else answers it... or who don't have a home..."
Instead, the pollsters have our minds under control, including the minds of many a sophisticated person on DU.
We sit at our keyboards and quoting polls to each other:
"Bush approval at 90 percent! I'm killing myself!"
"ABB beats Bush! Yeah!"
"Dean has 19 percent to Clark's 14 percent! But what if Gephardt dropped out?"
All of this is bunk. Especially that last item. How could a poll of the Democratic primaries have any validity, at this stage, still months before Iowa? About all these particular polls reveal is name recognition. (Until a few weeks ago the polls pegged Lieberman, laughably, as the front runner.)
We know Dean is probably the front-runner because he's mobilized the most people, raised most the money and landed the key endorsements; and we know that Clark is probably the number two.
But that's about all we know, folks, and it can all change in no time. It is a complete waste of time to be debating these poll numbers and asking each other questions like, "Who should drop out, to make more room for the top tier? Isn't it irresponsible of Kucinich to still be in the race?"
I'll remind you of a couple of other examples: in 1988, Dukakis led Bush by 17 percent in July. Yet by October, the media had practically declared the election irrelevant, because Bush was so far up in the polls. (On election day, Bush won by 6 percent, which a little bird had already told me months before. Score one for informed intuition over the scientific pollsters.)
In 2000, you all should remember, the polls had Bush beating Gore. On election day, Gore was ahead. (The little bird was a bit off this time. It told me he would take the two-party vote by 3 points. He only did that with Nader.)
Polls of "the population" are bunk. They are designed as fodder for media stories, as reinforcements of our prejudices, as delusional simplifications of the world, and they damage the body politic.
Everyone needs to know how to read, understand and above all debunk poll results and methodology.
We all must learn to ignore any poll report that does not state the methodology, any poll that does not show all of the questions asked in the actual sequence, and especially all polls that do not report how many people didn't answer in the first place.
And we need to stop accepting that absurd "margin of error" statistic, which is the single biggest part of the lie.
(Exit polls are an exception - these have much higher validity because they're getting actual voters as they leave the polling place.)
The most absurd polls of all, of course, are call-in and Internet polls. I can't believe people waste their time (and their money) participating in these. It is just about the least useful thing anyone can possibly do. To all of you who are always howling, "HURRY! NOW! UNFREEP THIS POLL ON FOX.COM" - please! You're doing exactly what the right wing wants you to do, wasting your time clicking on buttons.
Spend your Internet time on center-right message boards trying to convince people of the Democratic case. Go out and pass leaflets of interesting articles to people in the real world. These are constructive things to do. Don't bother with junk polls.
The following poll is at least sampling a small population, the 30,000 members of DU. But anyone is free and there's no way to measure what the type of people who never click on such polls actually think. But in this case I bet people who refuse the poll agree with the sentiment: Polls are bunk! Stop wasting your time with them!
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