Pages

Thursday, October 10, 2019

UPDATED: Impeach The Pollsters!

I'm sure readers here have seen some of the recent polling on impeachment. So has Trump, and he weighs in (below). Fox claims that the poll was based on "interviews with 1,003 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide." That is inherently non-credible:



UPDATE: It was even worse than originally thought--Dems oversampled by 14%:


Via @Str8Don (h/t GP), who adds:

Funny how @SpeakerRyan who now helps run Fox News has got them to RIG THEIR POLLS 
Check out their polling samples! They aren’t even polling fox viewers!
14+ D?  
They are trying to give cover for @GOP to impeach!  
Fox News is the enemy!



6 comments:

  1. Polling is inherently corrupt, and has been for decades. Democrats are always oversampled. (There's a laundry list of reasons for this.) They are always "adjusting" the sample. (This assumes responses are correlated to party affiliation or identity.) Polling is used as a "news hook" to lead as a story. Statistical sampling works when population samples are truly random, but opinion polling introduces a multiplicity of non-random factors which destroys any significance.

    To call polling dishonest would be an understatement. It's the drunk looking for his lost keys under the lamp post--because that's where the light is...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I updated--among other things to remind re the continuing malign influence of GOPe in the person of Paul Ryan, now at Fox.

      Delete
    2. I don't have any insight into the FOX boardroom, but I'd be surprised if Ryan (or any board member not in management) has influence over what appears on air. Operating responsibility lies with line managers. Oversampling by 14 points is indefensible propaganda.

      People like Ryan are engaged as board members for the WDC contacts and influence, not their programming expertise.

      Of course, you do run into the problem of line managers trying to impress the folks "upstairs."

      Delete
  2. I hang up on pollsters because I can never be sure if they're push polling. As I understand it, they're not really polling, they're trying to persuade you as they go through the questions.

    Also, the questions can be shaded to one side or the other.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't know if any of your readers ever read the Family Circus cartoon but Bil Keane used to draw a couple of gremlins named "Not Me" and "Ida Know." They appeared when the dad and mom asked the kids "Who spilled the milk?" or "Who left the door open?"

    It appears that they are related to Sammy 1 and Sammy 2.

    ReplyDelete