Obama's first failed appointment

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

People can take it for whatever they want. Its not for me or you to decide.

True dat. But I will continue to point out the over all statistical weakness of a poll.

The general public needs to understand the serious weakness of public opinion research in the U.S. Most public opinion polls (including ours) have to call and speak with about 4 people before one person agrees to participate in any survey. Since there is no way of knowing if the refusers have different or the same views as the accepters, there is no valid way to report that a poll really reflects the public viewpoint on anything. When polls report a margin of error (usually 3-5%, though our small sample size generated a statistic of 6-8%) they are, to put it gently, fibbing. What they should be saying is "if the people refusing to be polled were to have similar views to those polled, then the results reflect those of the general population with a margin of error of 3-5%". However, because the answer to the "if" is usually unknown, the actual potential error margin, in simple questioning, both in corporate media polls and in ours, is unknown but definitely larger than reported.

``Polls prove that people are stupid,'' said Hal Becker, who headed the Connecticut-based Futures Group, an outfit which specialized in sophisticated polling of the U.S. and other national populations.

``If you want an American to believe something, then all you have to do is get a poll taken that says it is so (and believe me, that is an easy thing to do, if you know how), and then get it publicized. You can tell somebody the Moon is made of green cheese--if the poll numbers say it is so, then the jerk reading them or watching them on the boob tube will believe it. Guaranteed.''

http://american_almanac.tripod.com/polls.htm