What about the polls?

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  • Doug

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    It seems to me that polling is, by now, much more science than art. Pollsters know whether or not their sample is valid and if their questions are biased or not.
    If those assumptions are true, the pollsters knew Trump was going to win the election.

    I suspect polls are skewed to give the results the pollsters want and are being used to sway public opinion, not report it.

    What do you think?
     

    indykid

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    Wording of the question is very important in getting the desired result. There are many polls where if you answer "yes" you disagree. These are designed to trip you up into giving the pollster the desired result.
     

    phylodog

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    It seems to me that polling is, by now, much more science than art. Pollsters know whether or not their sample is valid and if their questions are biased or not.
    If those assumptions are true, the pollsters knew Trump was going to win the election.

    I suspect polls are skewed to give the results the pollsters want and are being used to sway public opinion, not report it.

    What do you think?

    Liberals cannot recognize, nor do they acknowledge reality even when it bites them in the fanny. The vast majority of the polls I saw were skewed and even if the results pointed to Trump winning the election, no one tasked with conducting the poll would have been willing to accept it. I have about as much faith in the legitimacy of a poll as I do the reality of the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
     

    MCINDIANA

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    I do not trust the results of any of the polls. Two big polls that were wrong recently was the Brexit vote in the UK and the presidential election. If they cannot get these big ones right, then why should any of them be trusted.
     

    zippy23

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    Polls are only used to sway public opinion. Nothing more. You can watch every election and the democrat starts out winning big. The closer to election time, the poll closes. They must maintain at least some "credibility." This election, they went all out and didnt care about credibility, as they are still doing with every story that is flat out lying about trump. They will do this until he's out of office. They will do this to every republican candidate. Its not about news. Its about getting democrats in office.
     

    actaeon277

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    Problems with polls.


    1) Some people are private, and therefore will not answer. Those that do not answer, may not be evenly divided in the groups, and therefore.. skewed results.

    2) Double blind psychology can not be used. Many times, the wording, the phrasing, the questioner's tone, the questioner's facial expressions, etc. give away what the questioner is trying to achieve, thus causing skewed results. Psychology tries to avoid this by using double blind tests.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_experiment
    This can also be known in physics as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - How Quantum Suicide Works | HowStuffWorks
    ­One of the biggest problems with quantum experiments is the seemingly unavoidable tendency of humans to influence the situati­on and velocity of small particles. This happens just by our observing the particles, and it has quantum physicists frustrated.

    3) Misinterpretation of results. The results are actually there, but the person analyzing the results allows his own perception to affect his/her diagnosis.



    And I'm sure I can come up with some more.
     

    jamil

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    It seems to me that polling is, by now, much more science than art. Pollsters know whether or not their sample is valid and if their questions are biased or not.
    If those assumptions are true, the pollsters knew Trump was going to win the election.

    I suspect polls are skewed to give the results the pollsters want and are being used to sway public opinion, not report it.

    What do you think?

    I think they got it wrong. It's really a prediction of who will actually turn out. They did get it mostly right in the urban areas but they got it very wrong in the rural areas. They also overestimated the turnout for minorities. The swing states were the biggest surprises.
     

    AmmoManAaron

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    I think they got it wrong. It's really a prediction of who will actually turn out. They did get it mostly right in the urban areas but they got it very wrong in the rural areas. They also overestimated the turnout for minorities. The swing states were the biggest surprises.

    Re: Swing states - They completely missed the contribution of the Amish in PA for obvious reasons. Some have said it was the Amish in PA that put Trump over the top in that state.
     

    jamil

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    Re: Swing states - They completely missed the contribution of the Amish in PA for obvious reasons. Some have said it was the Amish in PA that put Trump over the top in that state.

    Now THERE's a voting block no one talks about. I think democrats expected hispanic turnout to be better than it was. I think it was pretty high in the urban/high-populated states, but it was disappointing (for democrats) in swing and red states.
     

    Doug

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    They got it wrong.
    This was either because their left-wing bias caused them to misinterpret the data or because they intentionally produced the data which would support the Democrat candidates.
    Either they are too biased to be fair or they intentionally "cooked the books."
    Either way, polls are best ignored.
     

    jamil

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    They got it wrong.
    This was either because their left-wing bias caused them to misinterpret the data or because they intentionally produced the data which would support the Democrat candidates.
    Either they are too biased to be fair or they intentionally "cooked the books."
    Either way, polls are best ignored.

    Even right leaning pollsters got it wrong. I suppose there may have been some partisan shenanigans here or there. There were some polls in Red states like Texas and Utah that I highly suspected were flat out mischaracterizations. But mostly, I think they misjudged who would turn out. Whooda thunk Amish would vote in high enough numbers to impact Pennsylvania for cryin' out loud?
     

    Doug

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    Even right leaning pollsters got it wrong. I suppose there may have been some partisan shenanigans here or there. There were some polls in Red states like Texas and Utah that I highly suspected were flat out mischaracterizations. But mostly, I think they misjudged who would turn out. Whooda thunk Amish would vote in high enough numbers to impact Pennsylvania for cryin' out loud?

    Don't tell the Democrats; they'll move the election to Sunday.
     
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