Polls Should Only Be Believed … … if You Like the Results

While online I came across a little box that asked, “Will you raise your daughter to be a feminist . . . take our poll.”

I was shocked to see the results of the poll. The site was a feminist site celebrating women’s history and all that entails. Of the 73,000 votes that had been registered on the site . . . 60% said they would NOT raise their daughter to be a feminist. But what was very interesting, and actually quite humorous, was the disclaimer they had attached to the outcome of the poll.

They said, “Take the above results with a grain of salt. Unlike the scientifically designed and implemented polls that you see on the evening news, open web polls such as this are notoriously unscientific. We use them as a fun and interactive way of generating discussion.”

Well . . .discuss this . . . why is it that when polls don’t reflect the views of the one asking the question, they are called unscientific, therefore “notoriously” wrong”?

Why shouldn’t we assume then that the other polls are wrong? Because with disclaimers like that, we can only assume that all polls should be taken with “a grain of salt.” This is Nina May, agreeing with feminists for the first time in my life.