Poor Political Polling

Polling has never been a specific science, and the Liberals are definately controlling it to their advantage. Unfortunately, this means twisting results and handing out misconceptions for the Canadian public to believe.

Isn't it funny that all the polls predicting Liberal success, are run primarily by major Liberal Party supporters?

To take you back to highschool statistics courses, you can see how easy it is to manipulate answers, and ask pointed questions, in the interest of a favourable poll.

To draw an example of this, let's examine how polls are taken for various "leading brand" toothpaste commercials. Yes, toothpaste, but bear with me for a moment. These commercials claim that 9 out of 10 dentists recommend said toothpaste brand. So how do they find this number? Simple. They send a case of their product to many different dentists in the region. If the dentists decides to keep the case, then it is one vote for the "recommended" side. If the dentist returns the case of toothpaste tubes to the manufacturer, then chalk one up for the other side. As you can see, this is not accurate polling, as many dentists wouldn't bother to make the effort to send back the case of toothpaste.

As for the connection to politics, you can see how easy it is to ask pointed questions, like:

• "Which party did you vote for last election?"
  
• "Do you agree with the Conservatives in trying to disrupt Canadian unity?"
  
• "Do you think that liberals have accomplished their goals in the past term?"

It is easy to see how any answer to these (and many other) types of questions can easily be distorted to bring a favourable poll.