is it unreasonable to conclude from this that the survey is more likely to have reduced the actual number of people who believe in the moral superiority of communism? that's what it looks like to me, but I have a bad feeling that it may not be fair for some reason I'm not seeing here.
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Doug Henwood <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mar 18, 2011, at 12:01 PM, Jurriaan Bendien wrote: > > > My experience with Rasmussen is that their polls are generally pretty > > accurate. They are pretty high up in the polling performance stakes in > the > > US. > > Your "experience," whatever that means, is wrong. They used to be good, but > have gotten quite bad. > > See, e.g.: > > > http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen-polls-were-biased-and-inaccurate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/ > > > http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/rasmussen-poll-on-wisconsin-dispute-may-be-biased/ > > Also: > > http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/is-rasmussen-reports-biased.html > > > But there are other respects in which I'm much less sympathetic to > Rasmussen's case. In particular, this has to do with their choices of > question wording and subject matter. The Politico question, for instance, > points toward an August question in which Rasmussen asked "It’s always > better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, > not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.” That is > not a question designed to elicit the most accurate reflection of public > opinion. > > > > Likewise, Rasmussen recently produced a poll in which they purported to > describe the Democratic health care plan to their respondents. Several other > pollsters have found that support for the plan increases when it is actually > described to respondents, but Rasmussen showed no such increase. However, > the second sentence in their description reads: > > > > The plans before Congress would prohibit people from choosing insurance > plans with lower premiums and higher deductibles. > > I don't particularly know where this comes from; Rasmussen claims that > its questions came from a 'summary of the legislation provided by the New > York Times', but such a depiction of the health care policy appears nowhere > in the New York Times article. But there it is in the Rasmussen survey, > where it appears to be designed to build a relationship in the respondent's > mind between the Democratic plan and higher premiums. > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >
_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
