Reply #33: Wording of questions/Polling [View All]

[Annoyingly Logical]

Good point Kahlee,

As a old Political Scientist, I am always struck by the ease with which "news" agencies report these polls as a true and accurate depiction of how the public.....all the public.... feels on an issue.

The first thing you are taught in Political statistics is to scrutinize questions you are asking to ensure you are measuring what you intend to.

In most cases nowadays, the polls we see on the evening news have been doctored to get a desired result by the group that commissioned the poll. Things like vague questions, leading questions, and filtered polling samples are used to derive exactly the poll result the group conducting the poll is looking for. Kind of like a reverse engineering approach.