$27 million anti-evolution museum to open soon

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by sycamore

I don't believe the majority of that poll...sounds way too PC. I'm not above giving people credit where credit is due, but 92% would elect a Jew? 88% a woman? 72% a Mormon? Bullshit.

Remember these are all hypothetical candidates from their own party though... So say a woman Democrat ran against a white male Republican. This would indicate that 12% of Democrats would rather vote for the Republican, i.e. he would win with 62% of the vote.

I agree that if it was a phone interview the numbers will be skewed though, people don't like admitting their prejudices out loud.

[elSicomoro]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Remember these are all hypothetical candidates from their own party though... So say a woman Democrat ran against a white male Republican. This would indicate that 12% of Democrats would rather vote for the Republican, i.e. he would win with 62% of the vote.

I don't think the numbers would quite mesh like that, but I understand what you are saying. Based on personal experience and some of what I've seen in my lifetime, it would seem that people would rather not vote at all rather than vote outside their party.

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I agree that if it was a phone interview the numbers will be skewed though, people don't like admitting their prejudices out loud.

I would think that because telephones still offer anonymity, people would be more willing to express their views. But I know I'm suspicious of my phone calls...maybe a lot of other people are too. Though I don't think polls are as suspect as Mercenary does.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by sycamore

Though I don't think polls are as suspect as Mercenary does.

Ok pick a poll that has original data which we can inspect and we can pick it apart. The point here is that you rarely if ever can see how or where the data was gathered. I spend part of my job reading original source research. You have to know how to find the weaknesses before you accept the data. And the validity would increase as multiple researchers are able to replicate the data you gathered in exactly the same manner. You rarely have access to how polling data is gathered, therefore the research cannot be properly evaluated.

[elSicomoro]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Ok pick a poll that has original data which we can inspect and we can pick it apart. The point here is that you rarely if ever can see how or where the data was gathered. I spend part of my job reading original source research. You have to know how to find the weaknesses before you accept the data. And the validity would increase as multiple researchers are able to replicate the data you gathered in exactly the same manner. You rarely have access to how polling data is gathered, therefore the research cannot be properly evaluated.

I have experience in both social and physical science research and am familiar with poll development. I understand what you are saying. While I don't think that polls get it right all the time, the major ones (Gallup, Zogby, etc.) seem to have taken great pains to be more transparent in their polling. For example...from this Gallup poll:

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,007 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted March 23-25, 2007. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

If you see more into it than I do, and would prefer raw data, that's all well and good. From what I'm seeing, this is a pretty solid poll...99% confidence would be nice, but 95% is usually a fair standard for statistical significance. And I don't have a reason to suspect that Gallup is trying to manipulate numbers for some sort of advantage or benefit.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by sycamore

I have experience in both social and physical science research and am familiar with poll development. I understand what you are saying. While I don't think that polls get it right all the time, the major ones (Gallup, Zogby, etc.) seem to have taken great pains to be more transparent in their polling. For example...from this Gallup poll:

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,007 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted March 23-25, 2007. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

If you see more into it than I do, and would prefer raw data, that's all well and good. From what I'm seeing, this is a pretty solid poll...99% confidence would be nice, but 95% is usually a fair standard for statistical significance. And I don't have a reason to suspect that Gallup is trying to manipulate numbers for some sort of advantage or benefit.

Good stuff. The only thing that I wonder, and I don't know this, are not poll organizations hired by groups to study data? Is there no potential for bias? The greatest weakness is not only in the regularly small sample size, for example I would hardly say that 1000 people with telephones represent and extrapolation to "most people think...", but the weakness in buried in the questions and how they are constructed.

[elSicomoro]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Good stuff. The only thing that I wonder, and I don't know this, are not poll organizations hired by groups to study data? Is there no potential for bias? The greatest weakness is not only in the regularly small sample size, for example I would hardly say that 1000 people with telephones represent and extrapolation to "most people think...", but the weakness in buried in the questions and how they are constructed.

I don't know either...I would suspect so. The 5% should cover most bias, though they have the disclaimers. As far as extrapolation, I guess it would depend on how they figure out who they're going to call...I don't know how they're doing that.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by sycamore

I don't know either...I would suspect so. The 5% should cover most bias, though they have the disclaimers. As far as extrapolation, I guess it would depend on how they figure out who they're going to call...I don't know how they're doing that.

Agreed. And then the press picks up a result and runs with it. And then it is exploited by one group or another.