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If few enough people vote, arguably yes (though that's a fairly complex question and depends a lot on what your conception of democracy is). But in essence, an
by pmyteh 9y ago
If few enough people vote, arguably yes (though that's a fairly complex question and depends a lot on what your conception of democracy is). But in essence, an election is a full-population poll: like a random sample with probability 1 of being chosen. So it's statistically maximally valid. We (political scientists) tend to squint a bit and say the opportunity to vote is equivalent to actually voting, so non-voting doesn't harm the legitimacy of elections. I don't personally buy that, but it's a tricky problem to fix.
- dominotw 9y agoSo if am I reading this correctly. Previously you said "any self selected polling is meaningless" Now you are saying "Self selected polling is meaningful when people who didn't self select had the opportunity to do so" . Ok. So by that definition the poll I linked, everyone had the opportunity to participate in the debate, theoretically. What makes it meaningless ? PS: Fixing democracy ect is not interesting to me in this context, I want to focus your claim self-selected = meaningless.
- pmyteh 9y agoBecause I, for one, didn't know it was happening and therefore could not participate. My chance of having my opinion count was zero. So pretty much by definition the poll is not representative of the universe of people-who-include-me. And by induction of all the other people who had no chance to participate. If you want to know more, I recipient looking up the 1936 Literary Digest poll for US President, one of the most famous screwups caused by non-random sampling: https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.html https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h...
- dominotw 9y agoits the same with US polls, everyone having an opportunity is merely theoretical. Lots of people are unable to votes for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps explain how you are defining * opportunity to participate* .
- pmyteh 9y agoIf you're arguing that elections with less than 100% turnout are flawed as models of public opinion, I agree with you.