Excuse the snark, I posted this to my facebook wall because I have grown tired of hearing the arguments espoused herein ************************************************************* Please allow me to explain how opinion, anecdotes, and statistical polling work.
You have an opinion. The people you speak and interact with daily have an opinion. Sometimes those people choose to share their opinions with you, or you otherwise view these people expressing their opinions. These discussions and observations you have and make are called "anecdotal evidence."
"Statistical polling" works differently. An (in theory) non-biased organization decides, or more likely is paid, to find out what a subset of people generally feel or think about a topic. A reputable pollster will then:
- carefully formulate a question to avoid influencing the outcome
- ask a statistically significant number of people this question
- record and tabulate the answers
- report the results (or provide them to a client)
A typical sample size for political polling is at LEAST a thousand people, selected from as wide a range of people as possible. A typical margin of error for political polling is 2 to 4 percent plus or minus.
When you read a poll, and say "I don't believe it! I don't know anyone who thinks that way / supports that politician or measure / believes that malarkey!" you are fundamentally failing to grasp how statistical polling works. You are confusing your daily observations for statistical significance.
A reputable polling company does not have to get along with you day in and day out. The people you regularly interact with probably do. A polling company does not draw its conclusions based on a sample of neighbors or family members or people who tend to look the same / think the same / work in the same field, etc. Most people do.
So sure, a polling company may be disreputable. It may have flawed methodology. It may be wrong, even outside the margin of error. These are all perfectly valid points of discussion. But it is not automatically wrong because you disagree with it.
The plural of anecdote is not data. There are people out there who think differently than you / support other candidates / believe different things. Sometimes those people even outnumber the ones who agree with you. Shocking, I know.
