Political polls and the nudge factor
July 30th, 2008 at 03:36pm Pat Cunningham
About 20 years ago, before the rise of the World Wide Web, I wrote a column about what I called “the nudge factor” in public opinion polls.
My focus was on surveys concerning issues rather than political races. And my theory, though doubtless not original, was something that just somehow came to mind rather than from any hypothesis advanced by an expert on the subject.
I argued that lots of people who are surveyed on certain issues, especially those issues that have not been the subject of intense national debate, haven’t really given them much thought and therefore haven’t formulated any serious opinions.
Wouldn’t such people merely declare themselves undecided or indicate that their responses belong in the “don’t know” category? I think not. Many people don’t want to admit ignorance on any but the most arcane matters. They don’t want to look like dummies.
Consequently, as I argued in that column, pollsters tend to unintentionally nudge some people toward giving answers to questions they’ve never previously considered. In such cases, the responses break down, one way or the other, into percentages that are not necessarily representative of the public as a whole. The polls become skewed by the nudge factor.
Something akin to my theory seems to be part of a forthcoming book (above) in which David W. Moore, a former senior editor at Gallup, argues that polls often fail to differentiate between “those who express deeply held views and those who have hardly, if at all, thought about an issue.”
There’s more about the book HERE.
Entry Filed under: David W. Moore, polls, Uncategorized
1 Comment Add your own
1. Menlo Bob | July 30th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Here’s an opinion that seems to defy reason. Obama says that we could save ‘just as much’ gasoline as produced from additional drilling by inflating your tires and having a tune-up. You suppose factcheck.org can be roused?
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