00:00We are constantly asked for our opinions. Which team do you think will win the Super Bowl? Who
00:19wore it better on the red carpet? Who are you gonna vote for for mayor? Public opinion polls
00:24are everywhere. Important decision-makers in American government have long relied
00:30on public opinion polls throughout elections and important legislation.
00:33The problem is public opinion isn't easy to track and oftentimes isn't even right.
00:38In 1948 the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a now famous headline, Dewey defeats Truman,
00:46they cried in big bold black and white letters. The problem is that Dewey hadn't
00:52defeated Truman. The Tribune had relied on polls to come to their conclusion.
00:56Whoops. This happens all the time because public opinion polls are either
01:02inaccurate or misleading. So why are they wrong and why do we keep using them?
01:08First let's start with an important term, sample. A sample is the group of people
01:14that respond to questions during a public opinion poll. A poll's quality rests
01:18largely on its sample and the sample can be bad in a few key ways. It can be too
01:24small, too narrow, or the poll itself can be too difficult. Polls that are too small
01:29are bad for obvious reasons. While you can't possibly ask every single person in
01:34America for their opinion, the more people you ask the more accurate your
01:38prediction. Polls that are too narrow, that only ask a certain type of person the
01:43question, are bad too. Consider a poll about whether or not the potato is
01:48the best vegetable in America. If you only asked people in Idaho where the state
01:53food is the potato, chances are that you would get a much different answer than
01:57if you ask people in the state of New Mexico where the state vegetable is beans.
02:02Getting the right kind of diversity in your sample means making sure that your
02:06sample has a range of ages, races, genders, and geographic regions, just to name a few.
02:12Finally, polls that are too hard can't tell you much either. If you're asking
02:18people for their opinions on things about which they have no prior knowledge, the
02:22results will be pointless. You're better off shaking a magic eight ball. It's not
02:27just the people you're asking that can cause bias, though. The person doing the
02:31asking is part of the problem too. That's called interviewer bias.
02:35Interviewer bias is all about the effect that the person asking the questions has
02:41on the sample. Humans generally don't like confrontation. People worry that their
02:46answers may make them look bad. Therefore, we find that people tend to give
02:50socially desirable responses, not necessarily their honest opinions, because
02:55they don't want to come across as heartless, racist, or bigoted. And the way we word our
03:00questions matters too. When polls purposely sway the answers one way or the
03:05other, it's called a push-poll because it pushes people to answer a certain way.
03:10Would you vote for Candidate Smith is a perfectly normal question. Would you vote
03:16for Candidate Smith if you knew that he robs senior citizens is a push-poll. So if
03:22polls are open to all sorts of manipulation and inaccuracies, why are they
03:26still so prevalent? Despite their flaws, public opinion polls provide us with
03:30some sense of the thoughts and moods of large groups of people. They offer
03:35politicians the chance to pass legislation they think a majority of
03:38Americans will support. They help fashionistas on TV know which star wore the
03:43dress better on the red carpet. Finally, they make us, the people who get polled,
03:49feel as though our voice has been heard. So next time you get a phone call asking
03:54your opinion, or if you see a poll online, take some time to think about who is asking
03:59and why they're asking. Then take that poll and its results with a grain of salt or a potato.
04:24so if you're just a tomato, then take that poll.
04:30So if you see a poll online, take a poll.
04:35If you're not getting a poll online, take some of the things you need to do so that I do
04:37because you can actually get the poll until you're asking for the poll.
04:40It's been a poll on the poll, I believe.
04:41I hope that it is my poll.
04:42So I hope you're following the poll.
04:43I hope you're following your poll.
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