A Fort Wayne, Indiana newspaper posted a poll at their website inquiring about the religiosity of their viewers. When
Pharyngula reported on the poll earlier today, these were the "early returns" -
- Yes, and my faith is important to me. 62%
- No. I'm religious but in a personal way. 10%
- No. I'm of another faith. 1%
- No. I'm an atheist or agnostic. 27%
Now (midday Wednesday) the results are as in the embedded screencap above. These results are certainly not representative of Fort Wayne, nor likely of internet users in general. One could argue at some length what value - or lack thereof - internet polls have. I'm moving on to other things now, but I thought this was interesting. It might be worthwhile to check the poll later in the day to see if other "constituencies" weigh in.
You can still participate in the poll (and offer commentary)
at this link.
Just google "Ron Paul poll manipulation" and you will see similar things. During the primary campaign when Ron Paul was polling in the single digits he was "polling" above 50% in tons of online polls just because his fans would spam any open internet poll in his favor. The same was true of Time Magazine's person of the year votes for 2008 which were getting spammed by 4Chan and the like. Even Stephen Colbert got his viewers to spam the NASA poll for naming the new ISS module.
ReplyDeleteGenerally don't trust any online poll. (also take a look at the religion poll now... 93%... It would be good to look at where all the referral links are coming from)
Professor PZ Myers likes to engage in "poll crashing" to call attention to just how useless online polls are as sources of popular opinion.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine the results of any internet-based poll to be actually worth mentioning, since they have no basis in fact.
ReplyDeleteWow...that's odd! I live outside of Fort Wayne, in Yoder & Fort Wayne is known as the "city of churches", 'cause there are so many. I'm wondering if the site was hacked. hmmmm.........
ReplyDelete