Polls

http://retropoll.org/results_poll_05.htm


Polls have been used in America for decades and the purposes vary. Some say the polls are there to make the public understand that they can affect pslitics and policy others feel it’s really so politicians can know the public opinion and “adjust” their opinion accordingly

Regardless, polls do consistently have their flaws. Many public opinion polls have a core problem of people being scared/embarrassed to admit they don’t know the answer or even worse, understand a question. This causes them to guess which creates inaccuracies and throw off the polling data. Also many political polls have the problem of surveying people that don’t vote because they don’t care as they feel that they can’t change anything so why waste the time? Plus, both polls have the issue of often only pointing out subtle differences.

The poll I chose was a public opinion poll. There were 30 questions most with a ‘back and forth” and forth that “engages” the respondent and gives a clearer picture than a short answer poll.

These polls begin with a few questions about opinions of the war on terrorism. Then they asked about ten questions regarding the bill of rights. After that, they went back to current politics and issues.

A major point that I took specific interest in was the percentage of respondents who answered “I don’t know”. They varied from eight percent to over sixty percent. As many of these questions were follow up questions (to a previous question), I found it rather odd that in one question seven percent wouldn’t know and in the next one twenty percent wouldn’t know. .

This inconsistency portrayed to me one of the fundamental flaws of polling especially polls such as these. In general its against human nature to admit you don’t know an answer, so in order not to look (or feel) like an idiot, they guess. The fact that people flat out guessed answers in these polls left me wondering how can we trust these if they aren’t the people who know enough to formulate a real opinion