ANYWAY, HOW RELIABLE ARE ONLINE POLLS?
According to Slate, online polls are NOT an accurate measure of public opinion because of the following reasons: • Respondents are not randomly selected. Poll organizers mailed ballots to people on a list of names. • Socioeconomic bias. Many have criticized online polling because Internet users tend to be wealthier, more educated, and more male than the population at large. • Questions and answers are always given in the same order. Pollsters speak of both the “primacy effect” and the “recency effect,” meaning that the first and last choices are more likely to be chosen, particularly when there is a long list of possible answers. In addition, the order in which questions are given can affect the respondents’ answers. .
