WHO POLLS THE POLLSTERS? HMMM?
I don't believe in polls and have been railing against them for years. Today, whether produced by Pew, Zogby, Time, or Newsweek, whether read to you by glassy-eyed poll-eaters, whether hot and topical or ordinary and soporific, polls are sister to the sound byte, the focus group, and the test screening. They can be spun to mean what you want them to mean, analyzed until the heart of substance at their conclusions no longer mean anything. They are a crutch, and a capricious one at that.
Polls are the new black.
You could argue that no person (or collection of persons) could ever talk to 1,000 people and arrive at any scientifically sound conclusion about 294,212,895 people (as of this writing). But we regularly talk to 1,000 people and draw such conclusions.
"Andrew, it's just a tool." Well, it's not a very good one. Time, geopolitics, local politics, product quality, the mood and responsiveness of the human mob -- these things are far more telling indicators of a poll's results than the nature and content of the poll itself. It doesn't help that for every significant poll one group generates, there invariably will be at least one contradicting poll.
What to make of the differences? That's my point...don't bother dwelling on the differences because they're often rooted in artificial distinctions. Do you, as a shopper, sit and compare buying experiences at Nordstrom's and Wal-Mart? Of course, not. But pollsters would be happy to tell you that someone -- somewhere -- has done just that. And (drum roll, please) heeeeeeeere are the results!
Polls are for weaklings. They're for people so busy suckling the tit of the information age that they can no longer extrapolate complexity from mathematically daunting bodies, like, you know, the population of a massive country. Let's be blunt: clarity and enhancements in the awareness of non-clients is not the centerpiece of a pollster's statistical methodology. They discard the pricelessness of reflection by swiftly assigning urgency to REACTION(tm), which, as any mature human knows, is not the healthiest of regular perspectives on life.
Polls are music videos, they are bodiless pundits. They are as meaningful as you want them to be (unlike a natural law), which, objectively, makes them suspect. If you drop an apple from a tree, will a pollster intercept it and conclude that something other than collision with the earth is imminent? You betcha.
Polls are the new black.
You could argue that no person (or collection of persons) could ever talk to 1,000 people and arrive at any scientifically sound conclusion about 294,212,895 people (as of this writing). But we regularly talk to 1,000 people and draw such conclusions.
"Andrew, it's just a tool." Well, it's not a very good one. Time, geopolitics, local politics, product quality, the mood and responsiveness of the human mob -- these things are far more telling indicators of a poll's results than the nature and content of the poll itself. It doesn't help that for every significant poll one group generates, there invariably will be at least one contradicting poll.
What to make of the differences? That's my point...don't bother dwelling on the differences because they're often rooted in artificial distinctions. Do you, as a shopper, sit and compare buying experiences at Nordstrom's and Wal-Mart? Of course, not. But pollsters would be happy to tell you that someone -- somewhere -- has done just that. And (drum roll, please) heeeeeeeere are the results!
Polls are for weaklings. They're for people so busy suckling the tit of the information age that they can no longer extrapolate complexity from mathematically daunting bodies, like, you know, the population of a massive country. Let's be blunt: clarity and enhancements in the awareness of non-clients is not the centerpiece of a pollster's statistical methodology. They discard the pricelessness of reflection by swiftly assigning urgency to REACTION(tm), which, as any mature human knows, is not the healthiest of regular perspectives on life.
Polls are music videos, they are bodiless pundits. They are as meaningful as you want them to be (unlike a natural law), which, objectively, makes them suspect. If you drop an apple from a tree, will a pollster intercept it and conclude that something other than collision with the earth is imminent? You betcha.
posted by Andrew @ 5:51 PM
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