On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 12:38:13PM -0500, Joshua Petersen wrote:
> In some ways, initially, yes as only people interested in a topic will seek
> it out at the beginning. However, as the topic comes more to the forefront,
> people will seek it out from both sides. Further, the self-selected polls
> are harder to corrupt.
Have you studied any statistics?
> Many politicians and corporations have done 'random' polls designed to
> get specific results. By controlling the way in which the people are
> randomly contacted skews results (such as a poll on the street is more
> likely to hit city people - in the U.S. that'd mean a higher
> concentration of democrats, phone polls which are more likely to be
> answered by people who have time on their hands - more less productive
> members of society, etc., etc.)
Yes, obviously these factors matter. And in self-selected polls there is
basically no attempt to control for these distorting factors.
> The strength of self-selected polling is that at no point does their
> have to be a single entity controlling it.
Strength? You call that a strength?
> Self-selected polling, however, is very good for determining the
> *interest* in a topic.
According to who? That's your assertion. I am highly skeptical.
> So when it comes to legislature and final votes, it shows that the
> legislation being voted on is what's important enough to the people to
> bring to all of their attention, which is really the whole point of
> this stage of the process.
Yes
> > Self-selected opinion polls are vastly inferior to randomly selected
> > opinion polls.