We all know that the way you frame a question can influence the answer. <\/p>\n
There are lots of different ways to do this, e.g., by making a question positive or negative, by emphasizing different aspects of the question, by making it complex or simple, by using charged \/ loaded language in the question, by the order in which things are presented, etc. And it’s not amateur hour. People study how to do this. <\/p>\n
Knowing that pollsters can influence an answer, which is more likely with reference to political polls: (1) that pollsters are seeking an honest read on the situation, or (2) that pollsters are trying to get to a predetermined conclusion? <\/p>\n
I think it would be a mistake to assume that it’s always 1 or always 2. <\/p>\n
It’s well-established that political campaigns use “push polls” to influence public opinion, and it’s well established that media outlets have political agendas. <\/p>\n
At the same time, … <\/p>\n
Taken all together, I’m leaning toward the idea that early polls are more likely to be an attempt to influence the election (e.g., push a preferred candidate), while later polls are more likely to be relatively honest. <\/p>\n
When I say “preferred candidate,” I don’t necessarily mean “a candidate the pollster likes.” I mean a candidate the pollster would rather have in the race, for whatever reason. <\/p>\n
What do you think? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We all know that the way you frame a question can influence the answer. There are lots of different ways to do this, e.g., by making a question positive or negative, by emphasizing different aspects of the question, by making it complex or simple, by using charged \/ loaded language in the question, by the … Continue reading “On the reliability of polls”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3525,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523\/revisions\/3525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}