No Easy Fix for Bogus Respondents in Online Opt-In Polls
pewresearch.org28 points by luu a day ago
28 points by luu a day ago
The bit about 10% of respondents claiming they had visited the International Space Station was funny. Reminded me of this nugget[0], which for people unfamiliar with the subject doesn't mean that 20% of Jews believe in Jesus... it means that 20% of the respondents to the poll were either deranged or confused, and self-identity as Jewish for no clear reason. It's analogous to "1 in 5 vegans say they eat meat."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jews-for-jesus-poll-15-of-jewi...
See also: Lizardman's Constant is 4%.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
And here I was thinking this was proved beyond any reasonable doubt when 4chan users spoofed the Time Magazine person of the year poll of 2009 to spell out "MARBLECAKE, ALSO THE GAME" by the initials of the top winners:
https://techcrunch.com/2009/04/27/time-magazine-throws-up-it...
Or when Kim Jong Un won in 2012, spelling out "KJUGASCHAMBER":
https://observer.com/2012/12/4chan-successfully-votes-kim-jo...
Or Boaty McBoatface winning the name of a research ship (given to a submarine on the ship).
From time to time we've battled multiple ideas around polling and tech within my friend circles, because there really isn't "reliable" way of knowing "what people want" when it comes to government's decision makings. It's such a hard "reach and incentives" problem, that asking for an opinion, might change the opinion itself as well, depended on the questioning. That being said, it would be cool to see real opinions of people on general matters, rather than heavily sampled versions of it.
Polls seem completely useless over the past decade or so. I think betting markets are a better indicator of true sentiment now.
The easy fix is to not do online polling.
You need to though. If you only do phone call polls you're only going to poll people with (landline?) phones who answer (random?) calls and have the time/enthusiasm to respond when you call. That heavily skews demographics.
A lot of people will only do online polling, and it's by far the easiest way to cover a lot of demographics (need to supplement with other methods as well if you don't want a poll of "internet users" - but that is a far larger and varied group than most other methods would produce)
[dead]