May 5, 2017

The poll against polls.

"Just 26% of Likely U.S. Voters say they trust most political polls. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 55% do not trust most political polls. Nineteen percent (19%) are undecided...."
Just one-out-of-three voters (35%) believe most pollsters are interested in reporting the attitudes of Americans in an unbiased manner when they poll on Trump. Forty-three percent (43%) think most pollsters are trying to block the president from passing his agenda. Just 12% say most are trying to help the president pass that agenda instead.

22 comments:

Michael Ryan said...

And this was among people willing to be polled?

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

How can we trust this poll?

Balfegor said...

As always Yes Minister has us covered . . .

Darrell said...

Nah. Nah. The November polls were uncannily accurate. Ask Chuck.

eric said...

Can we get that number down to 5%?

Gahrie said...

I have lied to pollsters in the past, and probably will again in the future.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The best poll of all.

Mark O said...

This is a poll of people who still use their landlines.

Swede said...

I haven't spoken truthfully to a pollster yet.

The sheer joy that I've derived from watching the Left absolutely implode from election eve to present ensure that I never will.

tcrosse said...

I wonder if the pollsters have figured out how to deal with the twin threats of telemarketing and caller ID to cut the number of their possible respondents.

Bay Area Guy said...

I used to read the SF Chronicle every day, from the mid-70s to the mid-0s. Now, I just read the sports page, which is still excellent.

In the 90s, I used to wake up happy, eat breakfast, read the Chronicle, but then find myself in a bad mood. It was that darn biased newspaper.

There'd be a story about Bill Clinton's antics, which was reportedly dryly, strictly, with no editorialization. But, then there'd be a story, about how a new poll showing that everybody loved Clinton, and that nobody cared about "Clinton Misdeed No. ___," so we should just move on.

They guy was way more teflon than Reagan.

So, yeah, we don't believe pollsters or polls, or stories based on polls. Too much left-wing bias.

Roy Lofquist said...

How many people answer the phone? Not many.

"It has become increasingly difficult to contact potential respondents and to persuade them to participate. The percentage of households in a sample that are successfully interviewed – the response rate – has fallen dramatically. At Pew Research, the response rate of a typical telephone survey was 36% in 1997 and is just 9% today."

http://www.people-press.org/2012/05/15/assessing-the-representativeness-of-public-opinion-surveys/

Larry J said...

The polls did a lousy job of predicting the election results. So, what do we get now but one news story after another based on poll results. We get consumer confidence poll results. We get Trump and Congressional approval rating poll results. We get poll results on who we do and don't trust. Now, going full meta, we get poll results stating we don't trust polls.

Before I dropped my land line, I'd get calls from polling outfits from time to time. If I answered at all, I'd hang up rather than respond. Why should I tell a stranger (who knows who I am because they called my number) my opinion on a political matter? It's different to spout off in a semi-anonymous manner on a site like this. I don't trust the polling outfits in how they can use and abuse their data.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Swede said...
I haven't spoken truthfully to a pollster yet.

The sheer joy that I've derived from watching the Left absolutely implode from election eve to present ensure that I never will.

5/5/17, 11:07 AM

The last time I was polled was during the run up to the Walker recall. The pollster hung up believing she had spoken to a fervent Tom Barrett fan.

lgv said...

According to another poll, 83% of voters trusted polls number, while 76% did not.

Larry J said...

And never forget, 76.4% of all statistics are made up.

Mick said...

Liars FIGURE and FIGURES lie.

The Godfather said...

Remember: There's no way of checking the accuracy of an opinion poll unless it's a poll about who will win a particular election, and we have recent experience that such polls are highly inaccurate.

Sigivald said...

What sort of madman would trust most polls?

(I've been push-polled. It infuriated me so much I refuse to take part in any.

And having seen how ubiquitous leading wording is, I never trust any poll on policy without reading the actual questions first, to see if they were serious, or just trying to sell a pre-planned result.)

wwww said...



A poll is only as good as the statistician who designs it.

People can design bad polls. But ain't nothing wrong with statistics.

Qwinn said...

I once participated in an obviously leftist poll that informed me of a local politician's consistent pro life record and then asked me if that information would affect my vote.

I said yes.

They didn't bother asking if I was more or less likely to vote for him. They filled that answer in thenselves.

Qwinn said...

BTW, that poll was in PA, early October 2016.