Tuesday, April 26, 2011

A poll to end all polls

The next time you find yourself shocked by the ignorance/stupidity/racism/perfidy of the American people, as revealed by the results of an opinion poll, remember this one, which purports to show that most Americans are unsure whether Donald Trump is a natural-born American citizen.  You may have seen recent headlines trumpeting a poll showing that only 56% of Americans are sure that President Obama was born in America.  Well, by comparison, only 63% are sure that Trump was!

Possible conclusions:

1) These polls are worthless. All of them. They prove nothing about anything. Respondents have no incentive to answer honestly and every incentive to get off the phone ASAP.  Have you ever been chosen to take part in one of these polls? I have, several times. Each time, my number-one goal was to get back to my regularly scheduled life.

2) Americans have a healthy sense of skepticism -- they're unwilling to say they're "certain" or "sure" of much of anything.

3) Most Americans are bad at pop quizzes.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments on posts older than 30 days are moderated because almost all of those comments are spam.