Reminder:
Archive for September, 2012
Finger on the Scale
19 September 2012That is very sloppy programming, where no answer within the alloted time defaults to the first choice (which, in this case, happens to be “Barack Obama”). A lack of response should either be ignored by the pollster (and most polling companies won’t tell us how many people refuse to answer) or counted as “no answer”.
Of course, some people will suspect that this is deliberate poll-rigging (although one shouldn’t rush to attribute to malice anything which can be adequately explained by stupidity). Even if that is the case, then it’s still sloppy programming because, if you’re rigging the poll to take silence as a vote for Obama, you don’t have the program say so out loud and thus provide evidence of your chicanery.