Why Online Polls Are Bunk By CHRIS SUELLENTROP Slate, January 12, 2000 The weekly poll on the Web site of the Democratic National Committee asked visitors: “As the nation approaches a new millennium, what are the most important priorities facing our next president?
Saving Social Security, strengthening Medicare and paying down the debt or implementing George W. Bush’s $1.7 trillion risky tax scheme that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy?” Thanks to an organized Republican effort, more than two-thirds of the respondents favored Bush’s tax cuts, prompting an embarrassed DNC to remove the poll from its site. News coverage of the incident explained that the poll was non-binding and non-scientific. But you could go further than that. Online polls aren’t even polls. A poll purports to tell you something about the population at large, or at least the population from which the sample was drawn (for example, likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire). Surprising though it may seem, the results of a scientific poll of a few hundred randomly sampled people can be extrapolated to the larger population (to a 95 percent degree of confidence and within a margin of error). (For a primer on “margin of error” and “degree of confidence,” see this Slate “Explainer
Related Questions
- Why Online Polls Are Bunk By CHRIS SUELLENTROP Slate, January 12, 2000 The weekly poll on the Web site of the Democratic National Committee asked visitors: "As the nation approaches a new millennium, what are the most important priorities facing our next president?
- Who can enroll students in courses listed on the Iowa Learning Online Web site?
- How secure is the Web site handling the online application process?
