I mentioned in this post that although I chose to stop listening for now, I liked The Pollsters and might return to it someday. One reason I liked the show was for the way it taught me some of the intricacies of polling technique.
The lesson I am most likely to apply is to include a ‘0’ in any poll that asks for a rating along a range – for example, on a scale of 0-10, how good is this TOA post? The ‘0-10’ range works better than ‘1-10’ for a couple of reasons. First, it helps mitigate potential confusion about whether ‘1’ represents the top or bottom of the rating scale. Second, a ‘0’ establishes the bottom of the scale as equivalent to ‘never’ whereas a poll with ‘1’ holding the line might tempt responders to consider the lowest rating inclusive of ‘almost never’.
I suppose the lingering question is, if I liked the show and found it informative, why stop listening? The problem I ran into was that my other podcasts were already doing a better job at what The Pollsters does well. I described in my previous post that I thought Middle Theory was a better fit for my ‘current events’ requirement. And of course, in terms of questioning the numbers presented in the media, More Or Less will always be my preference.
I was thinking about why I concluded that More Or Less is a better show for me than The Pollsters. I realized that the key is the difference in what the two podcasts focus on – The Pollsters analyzes what people say they will do while More Or Less looks at what people have done. It’s not a massive distinction in many ways but it’s the kind that matters a great deal to me. Ultimately, I consider what More Or Less does a prerequisite for making The Pollsters relevant because identifying and correcting misinformation improves everyone’s ability to form opinions and state intentions via polling. If shows like More Or Less didn’t participate in this work, the answers analyzed each week on The Pollsters would be based on misinformation and could hardly be considered a fair representation of what people thought about the day’s current events.
