George Rebane The following was submitted as an item of public information to The Union of Nevada Country on 28 October 2006. ===== We are peppered with polling results during normal times of the year, each being used by the journalist or pundit du jour to make some point and shape our beliefs. During the election season news about polls becomes a deluge as various writers try to prognosticate the election. This morning (28 October 2006) the venerable Wall Street Journal ran an article ‘Polls and Pundits: How Reliable Are Forecasts?’ In it was a graphic that contained the key question asked by the prestigious WSJ/NBC News Poll. It reveals something disturbing which we the targeted public should consider before swallowing all these percentages and mood shifts reported to us. The awkwardly worded key question and the interpreted answer are found below the pie charts. (Please click on image to enlarge)
This question totally confuses the notions of 1) the desirability of a Democratic majority in Congress, and 2) the likelihood (i.e. probability) of the Democrats winning congress in the upcoming election – two distinct ideas which can and should be addressed in separate, clearly written questions. The results presented here depend on how we think the respondent understood the question. But, of course, the unknown mix of understandings in the polled sample is not revealed in the answers’ summary statistics. So what’s a body to do if this kind of lower division performance comes out of our best and brightest pollsters? Or alternatively, how large of a grain of salt should we suck on as we digest published polling results?
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