Majority of Canadians polled say US partially to blame for 9-11

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tingkai
And why would the Globe and Mail/ CTV (a private Canadian network) want to rig the poll?

I thought it was Ipsos-Reid...

These are the same people who found that most Albertans supported Kyoto, but the news media just reported that and didn't report that the vast majority of Albertans who supported Kyoto didn't know a thing about it. You had to go to the Ipsos Reid website to find out the gems like that.

Polls are near useless for that reason, you can slant results too easily regardless for how "clear" the questions are.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Chris 62
Depends on whom you ask and where.

Example:

I want to know the popularity of Bush, so I poll 3,000 people, and come up with 98% favorable.
Satistically, most polls would say that's a + - 5%, so he's wildly popular.
What I DIDN'T say was WHERE I was polling, in this case, the REPUBLICAN convention!

This is the way many polls are done, most are done to "prove" an assumed postion.

A truly random polling system has yet to be FULLY devised.

I doubt that Ipsos-Reid would endanger their credibility (they and Léger&Léger are the biggest, oldest pollsters in Canada) by tainting their surveys with such crappy polling. Every time polls say something people don't want to hear they complain that polling is inaccurate...when in fact it's fairly accurate.

[Chris 62]

Tell me how you do an accurate poll of 250 million Ming.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Chris 62
Tell me how you do an accurate poll of 250 million Ming.

It's done all the time...
Can polls be rigged... sure. But after 25 years of reading polls and the technical appendix that goes with them... Most of the polls are done fairly and give you results with + or - a few percentages...

We wouldn't pay big bucks for these types of polls if they weren't acurate.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Chris 62
A truly random polling system has yet to be FULLY devised.

Do you really believe that?

A standard method for polling is to simply select names at random from a telephone book. In Canada, a poll on Canadian opinions would obtain opinions from across the country.

Ideally, the poll should also be done over several days. That avoids the problem where one segment of the population would not be at home (e.g. doing a poll on Sunday morning would likely miss a lot of churchgoers).

Polls can, of course, be rigged, but to say a truely random polling system does not exist is a bit much.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Asher

I thought it was Ipsos-Reid...

Ipsos-Reid conducted the survey. The Globe and CTV commissioned it.

Asher, just because you didn't get the whole story on the media you listen to doesn't mean that Ipsos-Reid hid it or didn't report it. I believe you can get full copies of any polls they do via their website (not sure...but I seem to recall).

And in any case, polling only tells you what its supposed to: what people think about an issue. One question by itself doesn't necessarily tell you why people think that or how well informed they are, or how strongly they feel. If you want to know more details, you need to read the whole study (if it was done to such depth) or do your own (if it wasn't).

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Asher

I thought it was Ipsos-Reid...

These are the same people who found that most Albertans supported Kyoto, but the news media just reported that and didn't report that the vast majority of Albertans who supported Kyoto didn't know a thing about it. You had to go to the Ipsos Reid website to find out the gems like that.

Polls are near useless for that reason, you can slant results too easily regardless for how "clear" the questions are.

No, the poll was done properly. If the media failed to report the full findings then it would be the media's problem, not the poll.

By the way, that old poll was reported in full.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Do you really believe that?

A standard method for polling is to simply select names at random from a telephone book. In Canada, a poll on Canadian opinions would obtain opinions from across the country.

You would also need to make sure that the percentages of people selected from each province matched that of the real population percentage... you would also need to include a small sample of people that didn't have telephones... Geographic and demographic weighting has been done for years...

[Asher]

Originally posted by Frogger
Ipsos-Reid conducted the survey. The Globe and CTV commissioned it.

Asher, just because you didn't get the whole story on the media you listen to doesn't mean that Ipsos-Reid hid it or didn't report it.

That's not what I'm saying, I'm saying you should never trust the polls from people like CBC, CTV, Globe&Mail, etc -- you gotta read them yourself to make any conclusions.

Which most people don't bother to do.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tingkai
By the way, that old poll was reported in full.

No, it wasn't. Go dig up that old Poly thread, the only way we found out about the "don't know" numbers was from the Ipsos-Reid website, the news media didn't report it.

[KrazyHorse]

So you're just accusing them of yellow journalism? A story as old as time.

The fact is, a majority of canadians are badly informed about any issue you care to name. Most don't kno what Don Boudria was supposed to have done, or what war with Iraq is based on, or anything else. Too bad. These misinformed, bigoted people are who vote in federal elections, and that's why what they think usually goes.

[Chris 62]

Originally posted by Ming


It's done all the time...
Can polls be rigged... sure. But after 25 years of reading polls and the technical appendix that goes with them... Most of the polls are done fairly and give you results with + or - a few percentages...

I disagree, if true, explain New Formula Coke.

We wouldn't pay big bucks for these types of polls if they weren't acurate.

So say every political pundit, yet they are often not in line with voting, or are you saying that polls are highly accurate, and thus can always predict with near certaincy an election?

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think I'm closer to Asher's position on this one. The US is partially to blame, but only partially. That doesn't mean we are evil and wrong or anything, it just means our policies was a part of the tragedy. It happens, a superpower simply can't avoid it. No matter what happens in international relations we are basically partially responsible.

[KrazyHorse]

So in the end, reporting tha Canadians were ignorant about Kyoto isn't the story: reporting that they're for it (for whatever reason) is.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Frogger
So you're just accusing them of yellow journalism? A story as old as time.

The fact is, a majority of canadians are badly informed about any issue you care to name. Most don't kno what Don Boudria was supposed to have done, or what war with Iraq is based on, or anything else. Too bad. These misinformed, bigoted people are who vote in federal elections, and that's why what they think usually goes.

Except polls like "majority support this" merely force a bandwagon attitude on lots of people. They don't think about it for themselves, they just go with what everyone around them is saying.

Which is why they're stupid and useless in the media and downright harmful in some cases.