Following the immediately previous posting here on TCS dealing with polling, I received in the comments section from an anonymous reader the following perfectly legitimate, perfectly valid questions.
Actual professional pollsters and front-line poll-sounders (the people paid to bug us at suppertime with questions on our voting intentions, etc.) are invited to respond.
Here are the questions from the concerned commentor:
So how about this for possible impact on the outcome of liberal polls.
Call made - respondant found out it was a poll, doesn't trust them to be unbiased, hates the liberals and won't talk to the polster. So his "never vote liberal" never even gets considered. Not undecided, just refuses to talk to polsters. How many of those do they get?
We are pressed by the media to believe these polls, but know so little about how they are done. I don't mean the high level common practice. I mean has anyone ever sat all the way through the process, right from deciding who to phone, to how questions are asked, what do they do if the person called speaks german? or spanish, or english??
Do they ask the first caller the same way they ask the 1000th caller. what if the polster can't quite understand the answer, do they just interpret what they heard? Do they call the same people from one poll to the next.
What do they do with the people who are sarcastic and rude?? Does one person make the calls or do 100 people make the calls. Is it just a job to those making the calls? Something to get through as quickly as possible? Do they ever just ignore the call and fill in the answers in order to stay on schedule? I would love to poll the polsters to find out what their answere would be and if the results would mirror the results they get from those they question.
Given the kind of corruption we see in the Liberal party, how many of the people making the calls are Liberal party supporters? Or known to the Liberals, who know how to put out the "warm and furry mat". I can't ask you to influence the outcome, but we know how hard you work and just might have an good job in government when you get tired of polling? conspiracy theory? Sure! But so many questions unanswered. So many reasons to distrust.
I wish someone would organize a poll that was so transparent, it could truly be trusted.
Why is it always the Liberal friendly media putting out these polls? Has the Western Standard ever done one where the results were any different? (not on alienation - on voting preferences)
September 19, 2005 8:49 PM
What say you, all ye pollsters out there?
2 comments:
All your rant does is expose how incredibly ignorant you are of professional polling methods. Rather than use as a source of information like-minded paranoid delusional right whingers, I suggest you actually do something called research. I'm sure your little burg has a library or you can visit some of the polling sites on the web.
Really, Stevie. This sad little article is the literary equivalent of you dropping your pants in public. All you did was show your bum.
Don
Note to readers:
"Don" is what is defined as a "troll". He's an ultra-extreme leftist, has-been master political assassin still lurking about even long after the end of the reviled Chretien era of communotyranny of which he was a key and very up-front player. He used to be somebody and still believes he is, therefore he "trolls" into the sites of nobodies like myself, lurking about, ready to strike as an undetected venomous snake will.
What he says must necessarily be taken with a grain of salt. He will try to bait myself and others with extremely vulgar insults and the like.
Best to ignore him most of the time, as I plan to do.
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