Now THIS is a poll question I’d like to see

August 23, 2007
By Billy Dennis

george_shadid.GIFSo, I’m writing the previous poll and I’m thinking about which local politicians have enjoyed popularity amongst members of both parties, and naturally George Shadid came to mind. ‘Ha!’ I thought to myself. ‘I wonder if Aaron Schock would be bragging about any poll that asked voters to chose between him and Shadid? Not bloody likely.’ You see, when I think to myself, I use a British accent. Anyway, since I have the ability to run polls on my site, I don’t have to bloody well wonder, now, do I?

[poll=6]

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11 Responses to “ Now THIS is a poll question I’d like to see ”

  1. RomanII on August 23, 2007 at 8:02 am

    Having been involved in an election once, I can tell you that these private political polls (paid for by the candidate) are skewed. The pollsters will give you the results you want, and ask questions in the manner that the poll can only be favorable for their candidate. Not so? Biased? Nope, only truthful.

  2. pollster on August 23, 2007 at 9:11 am

    This poll was taken by the same folks who do NBC/Wallstreet Journal poll. They are not going to skew their results to accomodate a client when they have a national reputation to protect. While your poll may have been skewed, the questions on this one were straight up and the firm above reproach. Go to Public Opinion Strategies website and then say the poll is bogus. 2002 Pollster of the year? For Skewed results? NOT BLOODY LIKELY

  3. 11Bravo on August 23, 2007 at 9:18 am

    The poll isn’t skewed by the pollster the poll is skewed because the candidate’s campaign submits the questions.

  4. Atheists: 75% of the population! « blueollie on August 23, 2007 at 9:21 am

    [...] about that when you take these online polls, such as this one, which Peoria Pundit posed as a challenge to aggressive ads by the Schock [...]

  5. Raoul Duke on August 23, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    I was polled and I can tell you that about 2 minutes into it I knew it was from Shock’s camp. There were many choices with him being one and when you did not pick him a few questions later there would be 2 choices with him being 1 and so on I honestly thought if I kept my answers very anti Shock (they were not totally) the last question would have gone something like…. If you were to have to choose between Aaron Schock and eternal damnation you would choose???

  6. Linda Groezinger on August 23, 2007 at 1:59 pm

    I like your poll question, but not having taken political statistics since 1989, I would suggest that this poll would not be considered valid due to the sampling probability, sample selection, sample size, survey question, and interpreting the result.

  7. pollster on August 23, 2007 at 3:38 pm

    linda, I think your criteria for criticising the poll are good, however, the sample size and margin of error are well within what people consider valid. We don’t know about sample selection e.g. everyone from peoria county rather than a proportionate sample from through out the district, but I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that a firm with the reputation of POS isn’t going to attach themselves to a poll with flawed methodology when other clients like NBC news/wall Street journal might be bothered by it. Lets be honest, Aaron is not important enough to jeopardize a major national contract and reputation.

  8. Linda Groezinger on August 23, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    Pollster:
    I wasn’t referring to the POS poll, I was referring to Bill’s online poll re: Shadid v. Schock.

    Still, I do not consider many “real” polls valid these days due to the fact that people have to be willing to take them, they are long and people don’t want to take the time, the questions are skewed based on the pollster (no matter how unbiased they try to be) and the fact that they do not call cell phones and many people do not have landlines anymore and those that do utilize caller ID and don’t pick up or let it go to VM. In other words, the only responder you will get is my mom.

  9. pollster on August 23, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    gotcha linda. makes perfect sense.

  10. anon on August 23, 2007 at 9:08 pm

    The cell phone comment remains me of the famous telephone poll that Alf Landon winning the 1936 Presidential race in a landslide, problem was only the wealthy had phones and they all voted Republican.

  11. 11bravo on August 23, 2007 at 10:15 pm

    How ironic that “pollster” refers to the company as POS because that is exactly what this poll seems to be.