Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Voodoo poll
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A voodoo poll is an opinion poll with no statistical or scientific reliability and which is therefore not a good indicator of opinion on any given issue. A voodoo poll will tend to involve self-selection, will be unrepresenative of the 'polled' population, and is often very easy to rig by those with a partisan interest in the results of the poll.
The most common examples of voodoo polls are those which ask for people to phone a number, or to click a voting option on a website, or send back a coupon cut from a newspaper. By contrast, professional polling companies use a variety of techniques to attempt to ensure that the polls they conduct are representative, reliable and scientific. The most glaring difference between a voodoo poll and a legitimate poll is that voodoo polls have self-selecting samples, whilst legitimate polls tend to randomly select their samples (occasionally on the street or at the door, but much more commonly by telephone or on the internet) and weight them to make them representative. See Opinion Poll for more information.
The term was coined by Sir Robert Worcester, founder of legitimate polling company MORI which he chaired for 36 years to June 2005, with special reference to "phone-in" polls. He used the term in British newspaper The Independent on July 23, 1995 to show how easy it was to rig a phone-in poll by voting nine times. The term is used frequently on Anthony Wells' popular and current UK Polling Report blog to refer to unscientific, unrepresentative and unreliable polls.
- www.doubletongued.org's source for attributing "voodoo poll" definition to Sir Bob Worcester
- Uses of "voodoo poll" in the media over past 15 years
- Example of a voodoo poll on public opinion on proposed anti-terror legislation in Britain on BBC Website
- Example of partisan manipulation of a voodoo poll, by eurosceptics on a BBC poll