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IT TOLLS FOR THEEMAINSTREAM MEDIA PRETEND POLLS MEAN SOMETHINGYawn. Another Slow News Day. Let's Make Something Up.Having done polling myself, I can tell you, they're pretty much bullshit. A bunch of minimum-wage marginally employable misfits is forced by circumstances to sit in a room together, calling up complete strangers at inconvenient times and harassing them with stilted questions on subjects the "respondents" don't know or care about at all. If the telemarketers, er, surveyors, don't produce "results," they get fired.
"Results," of course, are pre-determined. Questions are written and arranged to elicit certain specific answers. The tel, er, surveyors know this and try to conduct the "surveys" accordingly. For the most part, no one monitors them, there are no recordings made or listened to in detail, only a record of how long each survey took to complete, and how many were completed by each surveyor. The surveyors all know how many surveys they need to complete, and how long each survey should last. If a respondent needs to be led by the nose, or to have his answers provided for him, the surveyor basically does the survey himself, just to get credit for it and to keep his or her job. Sometimes surveyors will finish a survey themselves even after the respondent has hung up on them. Sometimes they call friends or family to help them out. Usually, nobody checks. Nobody cares. The company has to provide something for their fees. And they already know what is wanted. All they have to do is provide it.
Even the most scrupulous polling company is going to have trouble getting real results these days. First, there's that pesky "DO NOT CALL" list. Then again, most people rarely answer their phones, if they even have land-lines any more. Many people screen their calls with answering machines or caller-ID. Others simply hang up on telemarketers and pollsters at inconvenient times, or any time. Pollsters can't call people at work or in school, and they can't call cell-phones. They can't call too early in the morning, before people leave for school and work. They can't call people too late, when people finally get home again. Some pollsters don't work on the weekends, many never work Sundays. Then there's the whole time-zone thing, if you're polling nation-wide. It's tough.
The "representative sample" now consists of the tiny minority of yutzes and putzes who are sitting around home waiting for some stranger to call them up and ask them a lot of personal questions. These are people with absolutely nothing to do, who will comply at length with the unreasonable requests of a total stranger for no reason at all. Unlike most people who are busy, or paranoid, or possessed of a minimum of self-respect, the "representative sample" will drop everything and do anything to please a voice on the phone. They're representative, all right: Of mental incapacity. That's whose opinions make headlines today, folks: Children, morons, the senile and the terminally lonely.
In the Summer, the situation gets worse. People stay outdoors, take vacations, go to the movies, come home late, anything rather than sit home watching reruns on TV. For the mainstream media, or the polling companies themselves, to pretend that a poll in August is the same as a poll in March or October is just a blatant lie. The results are always questionable at best, but really meaningless in the dog-days of Summer. Never heard that? You never will. There's money to be made in the opinion business. And their poor surveyors never take vacations. They can't afford to.
To make matters worse, we now have polls that are openly and deliberately biased being touted as the real scoop on where America is headed. Push-polling puts words in people's mouths, and surveys of "likely voters" pick only specific people to respond. "Balance" is achieved by eliminating males or females, Democrats or Republicans, etc, until the numbers can be forced to jive. Yet all of these polls are treated equally, regardless of method or methodology. Why? The political Parties and the tame corporate media know that there is a certain percentage of sheep out there who will base their opinions, and their votes, on the opinions of others, as "shaped" and pushed by the Parties and the media. The Big Lie requires some big statistics, so they manufacture some, and put it all out like so many tainted tomatoes. And the sheep eat it up. At least, that's what the Republicans are counting on this year.
Don't fall for it, folks. Reality is how you live your own life, not something the media puts out. When it comes time to vote, think about your own circumstances, and who helped create them. Think about your own interests, and who can best serve them. After all, when's the last time the mainstream media put bread on your table? And which Party has had control of the White House for eight long hard years now? Thanks to them, are you better off? If so, vote Republican. If not, vote Democrat. No matter what anybody says, vote your own interests. Don't get poled this year.
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Labels: 2008, bias, CAMPAIGN, ELECTION, opinion, polling, polls, propaganda, surveys
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