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No they're not. There are some online pollsters such as YouGov who predict significant outcomes with quite good accuracy. We're not talking about vBulletin pol
by nick_riviera 12y ago
No they're not.
There are some online pollsters such as YouGov who predict significant outcomes with quite good accuracy. We're not talking about vBulletin polls or anything here - their entire business is polls. They also monitor the trends and opinions of people towards products, political parties and other things.
Technically you could ruin a brand or political party by doing a pre-election poll, quoting the stats on newsnight and demotivating the voters into voting for another party to avoid wasting their vote. This does happen. It wouldn't surprise me if cash changed hands here and there to make it happen.
If GCHQ got at the dataset or manipulated it with shill accounts at the pollsters then they could have significant power over the measure of public opinion.
- rayiner 12y agoYes they are. A representative sample of the population is not online, period, and the huge self-selection bias in the sorts of websites they visit necessitates some very substantial black magic to get numbers out.
- nick_riviera 12y agoI don't disagree with that at all. The stats are completely bollocks but they indicate a trend reasonably well even with the selection bias. What I'm saying is that they do have influence and after all, that's what GCHQ are about even if the numbers are wrong.
- nick_riviera 12y agoHN hostilities already... Even Reddit (yes REDDIT) is better than this hole.
- XorNot 12y agoIf this worked, then the republicans should've done better in the elections then they did. Guess what? They didn't.