New euphemism for ‘bogus poll’

Stuff has a headline Tory Whanau clear leader in straw poll for Wellington mayoralty.

This is bad. Election polling is valuable because it gives people some feeling for what the rest of the electorate thinks, solving the Pauline Kael problem

 “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.” — Pauline Kael, NYT film critic

Polling also gives newspapers something to write about that’s novel and at least a bit informative.

With good polling, people have an accurate idea of public opinion; with poor polling they have an inaccurate idea. With self-selected bogus polling they have no idea at all.  The Dominion Post even tweeted about this story

The poll, while unashamedly unscientific, points to Wellington’s next mayor being relative unknown Tory Whanau less than a week from voting papers going out.

The poll is incapable of pointing to anything, so it doesn’t point to Tory Whanau being the next mayor, however desirable that might be.

Back in the early days of StatsChat, when John Key debated David Cunliffe, we showed the results of three useless self-selected bogus polls about who had done better: Newstalk ZB was 63% in favour of Cunliffe; TVNZ was 61% in favour of Key; the Herald was a tie.

If a poll like this gets the right answer, it’s basically an accident. There’s no excuse for headlining the results as if they meant something.