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The problem I see with companies selling private polls, is there's an incentive to release less accurate public polls. Why give away the good info for free, whe

The problem I see with companies selling private polls, is there's an incentive to release less accurate public polls. Why give away the good info for free, when the more accurate info is worth tons of money? A company wouldn't necessarily need to falsify the polling data, just poll less rigorously to produce a misleading result. Could current oversight prove that they were being intentionally misleading? Producing private results which counter the public results would make for very good business.

Aloisius 8y ago
They'd only harm their reputation and ability to gain new clients. There really is no need either. Early access to poll results and crosstab data excluded from public results is still extremely valuable.
xoa 8y ago
>The problem I see with companies selling private polls, is there's an incentive to release less accurate public polls Out of genuine curiosity (I'm American and don't know all the workings of UK government), is the public actually paying for these polls (via some agency in charge of that)? If so then yeah, "the public" is a client and if they were getting shorted in favor of private clients against the contract then that'd be a problem. On the other hand though if polling companies are just doing it as a public service or form of advertisement (aka "see how accurate our public polls are on general elections, you can also expect that kind of rigor if you pay for us to poll about your product") then I'm not sure what the public interest angle is in terms of "less accurate public polls", nor do I see an enforcement angle given that those could just be the normal cheaper ones the company does and it's private entities commissioning and paying for more extensive, expensive and accurate collection. As far as I know polling companies themselves are private entities and are just offering a service. And in practice my understanding is that a lot of "public polling" is specifically being paid for by private entities in the form of newspapers and the like that then release it, because it sells news and in turn the ads attached to them. So same thing, if the news organizations found out they were being screwed they'd sue, and if results are bad enough they won't go with that polling company again, it's a competitive area. If the public isn't paying though then I don't see what else can be expected?
zawazzi 8y ago
I think you overstate the demand for poll accuracy. A hedge fund may want predictive accuracy but I still click on the poll that tells me what I want to hear.

Aloisius 8y ago

They'd only harm their reputation and ability to gain new clients. There really is no need either. Early access to poll results and crosstab data excluded from public results is still extremely valuable.

xoa 8y ago

>The problem I see with companies selling private polls, is there's an incentive to release less accurate public polls Out of genuine curiosity (I'm American and don't know all the workings of UK government), is the public actually paying for these polls (via some agency in charge of that)? If so then yeah, "the public" is a client and if they were getting shorted in favor of private clients against the contract then that'd be a problem. On the other hand though if polling companies are just doing it as a public service or form of advertisement (aka "see how accurate our public polls are on general elections, you can also expect that kind of rigor if you pay for us to poll about your product") then I'm not sure what the public interest angle is in terms of "less accurate public polls", nor do I see an enforcement angle given that those could just be the normal cheaper ones the company does and it's private entities commissioning and paying for more extensive, expensive and accurate collection. As far as I know polling companies themselves are private entities and are just offering a service. And in practice my understanding is that a lot of "public polling" is specifically being paid for by private entities in the form of newspapers and the like that then release it, because it sells news and in turn the ads attached to them. So same thing, if the news organizations found out they were being screwed they'd sue, and if results are bad enough they won't go with that polling company again, it's a competitive area. If the public isn't paying though then I don't see what else can be expected?

zawazzi 8y ago

I think you overstate the demand for poll accuracy. A hedge fund may want predictive accuracy but I still click on the poll that tells me what I want to hear.