Leading question or not, it’s an internet poll. Internet polls are completly worthless because there’s no way to get a fair sample.
A link was posted here, and sent over a few pro-life people. This tiny blog makes no difference, but if a larger pro-life organisation includes a link to the blog in it’s mailing list they could send hundreds of people over to vote ‘no.’ It could also happen if a large pro-choice organisation did the same. The end result of the poll depends not on what the general population thinks, but on which side is best at getting it’s members to the poll.
I think that’s exactly what happened here, based on one of the comments: “When I voted in late afternoon, the above poll said 94% were for family planning and 6% against. And then suddenly this evening, the against numbers started shooting up all at once, and are still doing so. This has to be a concerted effort by the HarperCons to skew the results.”
A huge swing like that in a short can mean only that there was a sudden influx of votes for the ‘no’ position, which probably means the link was posted on a large pro-life blog or mailing list. If it hadn’t been posted, the results would have been very different.
Suricou is absolutely correct that online polls are useless — if they are skewed by people deliberately trying to skew them (which is fun), their only sampling is the type of people who actually go to that website and you’ll find that only a certain type of people frequent CBC.ca so naturally their polls are going to lean a certain way. There are SO MANY reasons an online poll is far from scientific. I’ll never really understand why these news websites even bother with online polls. So as long as they do, I’ll continue to make my point and have fun voting.
No kidding that someone from a couple of pro-life websites sent a bunch of people to that poll! I usually can’t stomach the comments posted at cbc.ca, bu this time I found myself agreeing with many of them.
by 
Of coures, ‘access to safe abortion’ isn’t a leading question at all …
Leading question or not, it’s an internet poll. Internet polls are completly worthless because there’s no way to get a fair sample.
A link was posted here, and sent over a few pro-life people. This tiny blog makes no difference, but if a larger pro-life organisation includes a link to the blog in it’s mailing list they could send hundreds of people over to vote ‘no.’ It could also happen if a large pro-choice organisation did the same. The end result of the poll depends not on what the general population thinks, but on which side is best at getting it’s members to the poll.
I think that’s exactly what happened here, based on one of the comments: “When I voted in late afternoon, the above poll said 94% were for family planning and 6% against. And then suddenly this evening, the against numbers started shooting up all at once, and are still doing so. This has to be a concerted effort by the HarperCons to skew the results.”
A huge swing like that in a short can mean only that there was a sudden influx of votes for the ‘no’ position, which probably means the link was posted on a large pro-life blog or mailing list. If it hadn’t been posted, the results would have been very different.
And that is why online polls are worthless.
These polls are always closed by the time I get to hear of them. Are they only up for one day?
Suricou is absolutely correct that online polls are useless — if they are skewed by people deliberately trying to skew them (which is fun), their only sampling is the type of people who actually go to that website and you’ll find that only a certain type of people frequent CBC.ca so naturally their polls are going to lean a certain way. There are SO MANY reasons an online poll is far from scientific. I’ll never really understand why these news websites even bother with online polls. So as long as they do, I’ll continue to make my point and have fun voting.
No kidding that someone from a couple of pro-life websites sent a bunch of people to that poll! I usually can’t stomach the comments posted at cbc.ca, bu this time I found myself agreeing with many of them.