Do You Believe In Polls?

by minimus 30 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  truth_b_known

  Polls have two major flaws -

  1. They are only as accurate as the poll participants are honest (e.g. 2016 Presidential Candidate Poll).

  2. The person who writes the polls designs them in such a way to bolster and argument.

  Here is a classic example of #2 int he form of the age old "gun control" debate -

  "Do you A) Think we need stricter gun control laws or B) Think our current laws suffice?" Notice that there isn't a "C) Think our current gun control laws are too restrictive."

  That's why I cringe when I hear people citing polls as evidence to prove an argument.
• 

  RubaDub

  50% of the voters may say that, but the system to convict him is more like the Electoral College.

  DesirousOfChange ...

  You are absolutely correct.

  Whatever side of the aisle you are on, if you live in a state with a greater population (California, New York, Texas) your vote counts much less than if you live in a more rural state with less people, such as Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, etc.

  In the United States, people don't count: the land does.

  Rub a Dub
• 

  DesirousOfChange

  In the United States, people don't count: the land does. ~ RubaDub
  

  Originally, only land owners could vote.
• 

  Simon

  Some problems for democrats with the latest gallup poll. Turns out people think things are a lot better under Trump than they were under Obama (lamadindong). Even the "negatives" are really a measure that many people are coming round to conservative values - lower immigration, pro-life etc...

  
  

  https://news.gallup.com/poll/284033/americans-improved-mixed.aspx
  
• 

  redvip2000

  Whatever side of the aisle you are on, if you live in a state with a greater population (California, New York, Texas) your vote counts much less than if you live in a more rural state with less people, such as Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, etc.

  Yup. And don't expect that to change any time soon.

  But wait, if we do away with the electoral college, wouldn't that mean that areas that have a larger concentration of people would have a bigger deciding power than ones in rural areas?? Well...yeah, so what. That is exactly the way it works in every other country in the world. Areas that have more people = more votes = more decision power.

  
  
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  DesirousOfChange

  The Electoral College was designed to protect States' Rights. There would be no UNITED States without it as the smaller States would have never signed on if it was obvious that the larger (more populated) States would make all the rules.

  Same with having two Houses of Congress. For any law to pass it has to be approved by a majority of the populace (the House of Representatives, based on each State's population) AND a majority of the States (the Senate, with each State have an equal say on the matter).

  Getting rid of the Electoral College will bring about civil war as the conservative "Red States" will not tolerate being governed by the liberal, socialistic "Blue States". California, Texas, NY, and Florida would control everything. (Actually the 10 most populated States have over 50% of the US population.)
  
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  redvip2000

  What nonsense.
  

  As if the United States is the only country in the world with states or provinces. Shocking how folks in other countries who live in states or provinces with less people are not rioting on the streets, simply because their votes count exactly the same as everybody else, instead of the US arrangement where some votes count more than others.
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  DesirousOfChange

  And many of those other counties have gone way overboard on socialism (from all the deadbeats voting for more free stuff at the expense of others) and are in deep shit. That's where the US will also be if the Socialist agenda wins.

  The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. ~ Margaret Thatcher
  
• 

  Saethydd

  Polls are nothing more than a statistical analysis of surveys, and statistics are only as good as the dataset that informs them. If the dataset is biased, then the statistics produced by that dataset will be biased too. Additionally, it's really hard to generate an unbiased dataset especially when it concerns an opinion held by a group of people because the "average" and "standard deviation" of the opinions for a group of people are going to differ greatly depending on where the poll was taken.
  
• 

  Simon

  The electoral college is to prevent the "tyranny of the majority" where a few large cities could decide the policies that other states had to follow.

  You may not like it, but it's a better system than most others. Nowhere has a 100% pure democracy AFAIK, the closest you get to that is when there is a special referendum. But then people don't want to abide by those results either - it's more todo with people's attitudes when they don't get their own way than any issue with the system. When the system works for them to elect their party, they could change it, but never do ... because it just worked well for them.

  People complaining about it are like brats complaining they don't like the rules of the monopoly game they just played because they didn't win. The answer isn't to change the rules.