Have you ever gotten a telephone "survey" with a clear bias?
I just got a political “survey” call asking questions like “Do you support the health care plan that Democrats like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi support that might potentially lead to death panels?”
According to the information they got, under 50, non-males like everything the Democrats are doing… Even though I was just reacting negatively to the crap that these fear-mongers were trying to pull. The recording spit out the phone number, but no names, really quickly at the end and I didn’t have anything to write with or else I would have called them back and found out who was responsible for this crap.
Has this ever happened to you? What would you say if it did?
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8 Answers
It’s called a “Push Poll” and it’s not intended to survey anything. It’s intended to change people’s opinions.
The main reason they do this is because it works.
The most notable one that springs to mind is the primaries in the fist time Dubya ran for president. McCain was also running and conceivably could have gotten the nomination had they not resorted to push pulling in the Southern primaries.
The questions were worded in such a way that people were given the impression that McCain had fathered a mixed race child.
Of course that wasn’t factually true but it certainly influenced those with racist tendencies.
(The actual truth is that his wife fell in love with one of Mother Teresa’s orphans, brought her back with her and they subsequently adopted and raised her in their family.)
But the actual truth doesn’t matter in dirty politics and after those primaries, McCain dropped out of the race.
Why he didn’t switch parties after he extricated the knife from his back is beyond me.
So yeah, many polls are biased, to say the least.
What @pdworkin said. I got one about gay marriage a while back, asking me if I wanted children to be learning about gay sex in school. Told ‘em that if they hadn’t learned about gay people or about sex already by the time the teachers got around to saying something, I’d’ve failed as a parent. Good times. :)
Wal-Mart tried something like that when they were trying to force their way into building a 24 hour Super Store in our otherwise quiet residential neighborhood.
Didn’t work, though.
That’ll be the Republican hate & fear machine – literally a machine in your case. They were stepping up their attacks in advance of Sunday’s vote in the House. They’ll start up again once the Senate takes it up for debate, if Reid can ever get it past Lieberman and his own ineptitude.
The more they howl, the more it shows their desperation. Take it as a sign the good guys are winning.
Is that shite STILL going around? I can’t believe it. I swear, the rest of the world must think we’re idiots.
At least we don’t practice fisticuffs in the Capitol, unlike some ruling bodies. We throw words, not blows.
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