This is a must read for all. The statistics on polling are fascinating.

[anarchy1999]

Rahul nails it and provides the beginning of a roadmap, maybe.

http://www.empirenotes.org/

December 27, 2004

Thinking Beyond the Comfort Zone -- Polls

Here's my latest radio commentary for Uprising:

To me, there’s only one good thing that can come out of the shattering defeat we all suffered on November 2. That is a recognition that so badly have the left, the antiwar movement, progressives of any stripe failed that we must change the way we do things in its entirety. And so I continue beyond the comfort zone.

One change: the left must come to terms with American public opinion, and, in particular, with polls. Too often people confuse the descriptive with the normative; if a poll says, for example, that a majority of Americans favor continuing the occupation of Iraq (as all recent polls do), activists want to contest the results. The most common way is to contest the methodology: “How can a poll of 1000 people represent the views of 300 million?” Curiously, when polls go the other way, activists often take them as absolute signs that the people are with them.

Much poll skepticism is unwarranted. The claim that polls accurately represent public opinion is based on two things. First, an assumption that the population is being randomly sampled. Second, simple mathematical analysis. If , say you have polled 1000 people, randomly selected, 19 times out of 20, you will get within 3% of the numbers you would get if you had asked the whole country. In fact, polls do have systematic errors, like the fact that they don’t usually reach people without phones, and those can throw off results by a few percent; but there’s really no chance that polls, as currently conducted, significantly misrepresent the answers of the entire country to the particular set of questions asked.

[slay]

1. Other big problem - many people being polled know "FoxNews", not the truth

Right wing propaganda is also largely to blame for some poll numbers that drive most of us crazy. 40+% of people believing Iraq had something to do with 9/11 comes to mind most quickly. Most of us have seen it - people spouting FoxNews quotes as fact. Educating people is largely going to be left up to us, the underground.

[Az]

2. Polls in a post modern society

The trouble comes from the notion that in a tolerant post modern society we do not promote any particular beliefs or values. This is because we are supposed to respect each individuals own particular beliefs and background. However it does not play out as expected.

Post Modern societies develop an expectation of how people are supposed to behave. But it has no direct means of correcting those that do not adhere to its position. Thus the more active individuals in the progresssive arm of the society will look to the polls to see if the progressive ideas are being embraced. In the absense of any improvement the only recourse they have is to claim the polls are mistaken or flawed.

Meanwhile the more aggressive and assertive social structures will reassert their domination over those they can reach. They have neither qualms or moral issues with asserting their beliefs on others.

The grand idea behind Post Modern thought is that through reason and communication society would come together and form a cohesive structure out of the various values found within. It is not set to deal with aggressive systems that have no interest in playing by the rules Post Modernism sets. It is entirely dependent on everyone playing by the rules of the social contract.

[yurbud]

3. polls gauge effect, shouldn't be cause

This is one where the far right plays a better game. They don't read the polls them decide what they believe. They have their handful of issues that they repeat ad nauseum, then check the polls to see if they have moved opinion enough to get away with enacting them.

If you merely follow polls, that is like sticking your finger in the wind, and by the time you've adapted to it, it's changed again.

Polls can be useful for timing. Harry Truman was concerned about civil rights, but knew integrating the military was about as much as he could get away with--but the principle didn't change.

[s-cubed]

4. kick