[October 23, 2008] How much credence should you give a political poll? Tweet (Virginian-Pilot, The (Norfolk, VA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 23--With so many polls delivered daily, it's easy to believe the ones you agree with and dismiss the ones you don't. If it were only that simple. People should study all the polls, not just the ones they like, said Richard Kulka, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and a group vice president at a survey firm, Abt Associates in Raleigh, N.C. "If one shows your candidate leading by 15 points and the other shows your candidate leading more like 5, you shouldn't necessarily assume that the large one is correct," he said. "The extremes are probably not going to be correct most of the time." Experts also warn about online polls. Polls that ask Web site users to vote with a click of the mouse aren't regarded by experts as good measures of public opinion. For example, MSNBC says on its Web site that amid the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the 1990s, 73 percent of people voting in an online survey said President Clinton should leave office. But an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll at the same time found that only 34 percent of people supported that view. Online surveys are not scientific, but they can affect public opinion, said Joshua Behr, an associate professor of political science and geography at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. "It's influential," said Behr, who said he doesn't like online polls. "People have interest in it and it's generating conversation." Polls on PilotOnline.com have this disclaimer: "This survey is an unscientific sampling of visitors to this Web site." Behr also warned poll readers about "disaffection" -- when supporters of a losing candidate may refuse to even participate in a poll. When one candidate is leading another by up to 10 percentage points in a race, Behr said, the supporters of the losing candidate may be "disaffected" enough that they don't want to participate in a poll. "They're less likely to register their preference or even participate in the poll," Behr said. And that, he said, could tip polls even further in the favor of the frontrunner without truly reflecting how people will vote. To see more of the The Virginian-Pilot, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pilotonline.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]