Yes the devil’s in the detail, but there is no such thing as a survey without methods; and every method has its constants and assumptions. Yes, sometimes there are ulterior motives - but frequently it’s just lack of time, money, thematic tradeoffs, methodological complexity, etc.
This is why it’s good to have different mutually independent polling companies asking the same questions. They won’t perfectly align, but they will give a corridor of reasonable expectation.
This was only one example. If they were constraints like time or money there would still be some results from the 18-49 demographic. I had other samples from other polls during this time frame that used similar methodology to manipulate perception.
You’re probably right in this specific case; this seems suspiciously one-sided. Do you have a link to the source where they explain their methods?
Generally something like this can happen though, especially if you do e.g. random dialing on the landline to survey people; mostly older people still use landlines and mostly retired people actually pick up during office hours. A good social scientist would obviously try to measure and control for those sampling errors though, not make them on purpose to get pre-determined results.
Yes the devil’s in the detail, but there is no such thing as a survey without methods; and every method has its constants and assumptions. Yes, sometimes there are ulterior motives - but frequently it’s just lack of time, money, thematic tradeoffs, methodological complexity, etc.
This is why it’s good to have different mutually independent polling companies asking the same questions. They won’t perfectly align, but they will give a corridor of reasonable expectation.
This was only one example. If they were constraints like time or money there would still be some results from the 18-49 demographic. I had other samples from other polls during this time frame that used similar methodology to manipulate perception.
You’re probably right in this specific case; this seems suspiciously one-sided. Do you have a link to the source where they explain their methods?
Generally something like this can happen though, especially if you do e.g. random dialing on the landline to survey people; mostly older people still use landlines and mostly retired people actually pick up during office hours. A good social scientist would obviously try to measure and control for those sampling errors though, not make them on purpose to get pre-determined results.
I have the methods for this poll buried somewhere. I do remember it was a mix of landline/cell, in person, and mail.