That’s not how polling works
I was struck by the Herald headline this morning “Gay marriage fans on top in objector’s poll”, which goes on to say
The Family First lobby group has published a poll which finally concedes what all other polls in the past year have shown – that more New Zealanders now support gay marriage than oppose it.
The poll of 1000 people by blogger David Farrar’s Curia Research has found 47 per cent think same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, against 43 per cent who think “civil unions are sufficient for same-sex couples”.
“Objector’s”, in the singular, would appear to refer to David Farrar, but as you would expect from the rest of his political beliefs, he’s firmly on the record as supporting marriage equality. Assuming the apostrophe belongs after the “s”, meaning Family First, it still shouldn’t be relevant to the sampling that the poll was funded by them, though it might be surprising that they published the results (Curia also published the full results; I don’t know if they needed Family First’s permission to do so).
The level of support is still a bit lower than in some other polls. I’d guess that’s because of the phrasing of the question,
In 2004, Parliament legislated to allow same sex couples to register a civil union, amending over 150 pieces of legislation to give legal rights and recognition to same-sex couples. Do you think Parliament should change the definition of marriage to allow same-sex couples to marry, or do you think civil unions are sufficient for same sex couples?
compared to the Colmar Brunton question
Question: In New Zealand same-sex couples can enter into a Civil Union, but they are not able to get married. Do you think same-sex couples should be able to get married?
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
“Objectors'” would have clearly been a reference to the people involved in Family First. However, I’m don’t see why the “objector” in “objector’s” can’t be read as a reference to Family First the legal entity, as opposed to Farrar (Family First is a registered charitable trust.)
12 years ago
Yes, I agree “objector’s” could also be read as referring to Family First as a unit (and that’s probably what was intended). The unnecessary mention of Farrar and his blogging do make that reading less obvious than it should be. Also, referring to a lobby group as “an objector” seems strange somehow, despite the syntactic agreement.
I’ve just looked at a lot of headlines from the Herald’s past, and couldn’t find anything analogous to compare to.
12 years ago
Yes there’s something a little awkward about a legal person being an “objector.” Objecting (especially to marriage equality) is an activity we normally associate with human people.
I can imagine a context where it might seem less awkward to describe a legal entity as an “objector”:
“All but one of the soft drink companies agreed to the proposal to regulate advertising. The sole objector was ‘Fizz Co’.”
Of course, there it’s clear what the objector is.
12 years ago