WHAT CONSTITUTES A "LEGITIMATE" POLL?

Someone on another forum opened a debate about the legitimacy of polls. I thought I'd start a thread in the sandbox to debate the topic as it relates to posts and threads here as well...

So what constitutes a LEGITIMATE poll? Does a newspaper poll count? Must it be completely random to deserve merit?

Open access poll

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An open access poll is a type of opinion poll in which participants are self-selected. The term includes call-in, mail-in, and some online polls.

The most common examples of open access polls are those which ask for people to phone a number, or to click a voting option on a website or send back a coupon cut from a newspaper. By contrast, professional polling companies use a variety of techniques to attempt to ensure that the polls they conduct are representative, reliable and scientific. The most glaring difference between an open access poll and a legitimate poll is that open access polls have self-selected participants, while scientific polls typically randomly select their samples(occasionally on the street or at the door, but much more commonly by telephone or on the internet) and weight them to make them representative. See Opinion Poll for more information.

Advantages
Since participants in an open access poll are volunteers rather than a random sample, such polls represent the most interested individuals, just as in voting. In the case of political polls, such participants might be more likely voters, and elections are won by those that show up.

Disadvantages
Due to selection bias, open access polls may not have participants that represent the larger population. As a consequence, the results of the poll cannot be generalized, but are only valid for the participants of the poll.

Online poll
An online poll is a survey in which participants communicate their responses via the Internet, typically by completing a questionnaire presented in a web page. Online polls may allow anyone to participate, or they may be restricted to a sample drawn from a larger panel. The use of online panels has become increasingly popular and is now the single biggest research method in Australia.[1]

Proponents of scientific online polling state that in practice their results are no less reliable than traditional polls, and that the problems faced by traditional polling, such as inadequate data for quota design and poor response rates for phone polls, can also lead to systemic bias. [2][3] Some others express the hope that careful choice of a panel of possible respondents may allow online polling to become a useful tool of analysis, but feel that this is rarely the case. [4]

Voodoo poll
A voodoo poll (or pseudo-poll) is a pejorative description of an opinion poll with no statistical or scientific reliability and which is therefore not a good indicator of opinion on any given issue. A voodoo poll will tend to involve self-selection, will be unrepresentative of the target population, and is often very easy to rig by those with a partisan interest in the results of the poll.[5][6]

The term was coined by Sir Robert Worcester, founder of legitimate polling company MORI which he chaired for 36 years to June 2005, with special reference to "phone-in" polls. He used the term in British newspaper The Independent on July 23, 1995 to show how easy it was to rig a phone-in poll by voting nine times. The term is still used to refer to unscientific, unrepresentative and unreliable polls.[7]

I've been accused of dismissing newspaper polls. Guilty as charged. Here's why: those polls tend to attract a very polarized group of people. I believe those more passionately engaged in the issue tend to seek out such polls and vote.

I also believe the poll is posted when there is a polarizing editorial in that paper. The editorial could be in favour or opposed and that too skews the results.

I guess those polls would be labeled voodoo polls...

Personally, I tend to give more weight to a poll that is random in nature and asks a straight-forward unbiased question. A question not weighed down by the pollsters bias.

pretty muc all online or phone in polls have a serious failing. they rely on the person answering to put at least minimal effort in. The problem with this is that for the most part only those passionately FOR a question will answer it. Those who are soso FOR it wont likely bother HOWEVER

Those against either passionately or soso will both answer which ends up stretching the results into something that is not really true.

(to answer the question in the title.. .about 8 inches)

I belong to the Angus Reid group and get polled every month and sometimes a couple of times a month.

I've seen where they have obviously taken time to formulate the questions and at times, ask it a page or two later in a different manner...suggesting a certain professional approach to the results.

Of course, the best pollster around these parts is Nik Nanos..accurate within a seat or so last election I believe.

From my perspective, polls are a slice in time, nothing more.

Numbers can be manipulated, the questions are invariably manipulated.....a poll is like what JTF says, a slice, a sampling but not necessarily indicative of anything concrete. Even a plebiscite is not accurate, not when one cannot guarantee a one hundred percent voter turnout. As well that question asked may have one result in the city but a completely different result in say Plum Coulee???? So then what is accurate? Not much.

I feel that news rooms should not be able to conduct running polls during election campaigns and absolutely not broadcast results to their viewers until after the election has finished.

wpg_idiot wrote:I feel that news rooms should not be able to conduct running polls during election campaigns and absolutely not broadcast results to their viewers until after the election has finished.

I 100% agree on that. Too many people use their votes as "swing" votes and only vote for the people that are "winning" instead of using the issues to vote. Its very frustrating to see this effect from one poll to the next.