Several
polls showed that the turnout of religious conservatives in Ohio ticked upward because of a state ballot referendum to ban same-sex marriage.
"When some of our members have gone to early voting or to register to vote, they're being asked if they're citizens of the United States." Gonzalez says she has heard from "about half a dozen people, all of them in South Florida," who approached the
polls as part of the early election only to be asked their citizenship.
"If the
poll just interviews people who volunteer for the
poll, like most Web
polls, ignore it," says Warren Mitofsky, a polling expert who has influenced the field for decades.
And
poll after
poll show the two candidates oscillating within a few percentage points of one another.
Given these conditions, Eisinger concludes that "with the advent of
polls, presidents have found the political instrument that provides them with autonomy, accuracy, and power" (p.
Even worse, professional pollsters are adept at producing virtually any conclusion they want via clever wording of questions, arbitrary selection of those
polled, or out-and-out lying.
One
poll asked readers if they would invest in the paper industry and if so where.
He has a narrower thesis to defend: that
polls designed to ask voters if they want more government spending on any given item don't generate politically useful information.
And in politics, weakness equals defeat at the
polls.
In many cases,
poll workers who refused to allow voters to cast their ballot declined to make any effort to verify their registration status, telling them instead to "come back later." Some
poll workers attempted to get approval for the voters to cast their ballots but were denied by "headquarters."
With so many
polls, at least reporters can compare and contrast, and "discern a middle ground," Gilbert says.
Besen says if more
polls were to replicate the finding that friends and relatives of gays are no more likely than others to support gay rights laws, "then we would have to take a hard look at it.