…+ or - 2% extrapolated from the 15 or so people I asked.
OK, this is not quite a rant, question, or poll, but…
What’s up with political opinion polls? Politicians don’t take a stand on anything unless they have a poll. Gallup is seemingly doing polls around the clock. They gotta poll for everything.
Or so they claim. See, they’re supposed to ask the ‘average American voter’, or some such nonsense. Now, I’ve been all over the country, met a lot of people, and have yet to run across any one of the people that politicians are basing their positions on. You’d think I’d of met at least one. Just who are they asking? Are they random yahoos from the phone book? Washington insiders? The people who write letters to their Congresspersons? Are they using the same list of people that they’ve been using since 1963?
Or are they, as I suspect, just pulling numbers out of thin air. I think they’re just making it all up. Since you Dopers are the smartest people I can reasonably have contact with, I’ll ask you. Are you one the people being polled? Do you personally know someone who is being polled? Just who are these people? Am I just being paranoid?
what I love is when they post things like “He’s risen from 48% to 53%, showing a clear change in the opinion of the American voter. I think he’s really starting to take the lead here. Oh, and this poll as a margin of error of +/-7%.”
So what you;r telling me is that he might actually be down 2%, but you really don’t know. Yeah, I think these guys go out on their lunch break, between postings to the SDMB or whenever, and talk to about 3 people. From here they extrapolate across the regions ethnic and politcal base and, viola, you have your numbers. Toss in a 3-7% MoE and you’re set.
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