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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Survey: People Don't Trust Polls

A new survey highlights the two-front problem facing the polling industry: People don't trust polls, and many say they are unlikely to want to participate in them.

Let's take trust first. The Kantar survey, conducted to assess how people view polls, shows that 75 percent of Americans think most polls they hear about are biased toward a particular point of view.

But Americans differentiate polls based on their source. Most say they trust polls from nonpartisan foundations and academic centers, slightly fewer trust polls from polling companies or news media organizations, and even fewer have faith in those from political parties or candidates.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whether it's polls, politicians quoting stats or newspapers quoting either, when it happens I shut down. You can load questions to support any hypothesis or cherry pick stats to make it say whatever you want.

Anonymous said...

There are many one sided polls, and the reader needs to understand who is being polled, and go from there. For instance, Newsmax polls are from right wingers that are not totally sick of their pummelling and have not blocked their emails. Not sure what segment of society that genre represents!

Anonymous said...

I realize the Polls bear the brunt of a lot of jokes,but I trust them.