It goes deeper than that
Baron Max said:
"The polls are what we have, Max."??? So that means that we should accept them and believe them?
The relationship between what you left out of your quote and the question you asked is striking.
Is that how you conduct your life, Tiassa?
You know, a lot of times, when following a hand-drawn map—or even one printed from the internet—I find twists and turns in the road, and even cross-streets, that aren't depicted. If I cling solely to what the map shows me, I'll be confused. If I observe the relevant aspects of the map—e.g. the road I'm on, the road I want to turn on—things usually work out.
Likewise with polls, Max.
Consider the poll in the thread "The Gay Fray". For the first year of the thread, the result showed a strong statistical deviation, with homosexuals making up nearly a quarter of the respondents. It's been open for at least three years, now, and the statistics have fallen into line. Right now, slightly under 11% of the respondents are homosexuals, which is about on target with historical expectation.
In high school, we did the coin-flip experiment to show how statistics even out. My group witnessed a massive statistical deviation, a 20-5 result, with a string of
seventeen heads in a row. But mixed in with the rest of the class, the whole thing came out about 51-49.
Returning to what you left out of your quote compared to the question you asked, we might wonder at what people choose to believe. Neither of the Gallup polls prove
anything conclusively. They merely
suggest a result:
The results suggest complaints from the "progressive" Left are marginal, and that the Right's concerns about Obama's extremism, radicalism, or whatever else we might call it, is likewise a fringe issue.
Like I said, Max,
to simply dismiss polling as "stupid" is about as useful as believing one single poll speaks gospel truth.
Now, perhaps some people place too much faith in polls. And perhaps your own beliefs are restricted in such a fashion as to fail to allow for anything else. But what people believe will be affected by their own analysis of the information they receive. To "believe" a poll is a vague notion:
What about the poll does someone believe?
Yep, so the polls serve the purpose ...people get to pick n' choose which one to believe. And then to make it even more of a political propaganda machine, the media pick which poll to show the public on their broadcasts, which expands that propaganda machine.
Well, if you really think this is a problem, you'd probably find yourself more useful if you put some effort into actually exploring issues of restricted perspective and political propaganda than simply calling people stupid.
If polls aren't "stupid", then how could two different polls, on the same subject, have such varying results? And worse, Tiassa, since that happens regularly, why would anyone willingly chose to believe any of them?
Depends on what they willingly choose to believe. Even here at Sciforums, we saw some folks running around waving the statistical deviation in the air, cheering for McCain as if only the defiance of the larger trend could possibly be true.
The final polling results at
RealClearPolitics, for instance, suggested a 7% margin for Obama. The
popular vote brought a 7% spread. Individual polls, though ranged from Obama +2 to +11. If one chose to take a narrow view, they might have expected a stronger or weaker victory, but accounting for as many polls as possible brought the RCP averages fairly close to the final outcome. The difference in the electoral outcome at RCP comes from North Carolina, Indiana, and Nebraska. In NC, the difference between the polling and the final vote was less than one percent, which gave the state to Obama. In Indiana, the difference between polling and the final vote was under 3%, which is within a standard margin of error. And Nebraska splits its electoral votes, one of which went to Obama, thereby accounting for the difference between projections and the final electoral outcome.
If people chose to believe in one poll while ignoring all others, that's their business. A lot of people pinned their hopes on one poll, which isn't quite the same thing. Still, though, I stand by my prior assertion: The best thing to do is to consider a range of polls; the broader the result, the more accurate it should be.
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Notes:
Data for comparing polling to the final outcome of the 2008 election is drawn from the following:
See Also:
Franke-Ruta, Garance. "Obama Wins Nebraska Electoral Vote". The Trail. November 14, 2008. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/11/14/obama_wins_nebraska_electoral.html
