Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "NBC News" channel.

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  25. Which leaves us in the uncomfortable position of not being able to wholeheartedly trust any given poll, yet not being able to entirely dismiss their findings. The thing I find most helpful, when I’m at all bothered to know what a poll truly says (which is not often) is to go to the source, find out who did the poll, what the exact grammar of the question was and how it was put to them, and all of that comes after learning what the demographic was and whether they’re a true representation of the target group. There’s a world of difference, for instance between answering a poll privately instead of in front of friends, family or colleagues. There’s a world of difference between whether it was filling in a form or giving verbal answers to a person on the phone, who may or may not have been trained to lead their subject with cunning linguistics, and who may just hang up on people who sound like they’re not going to give them the answers they’re looking for. However, what’s of genuine use is not so much the findings of the poll, but what it tells you about the concerns of those who conduct them. What is it that they hope to prove and why they want to show it, and when, and in what way, tells you quite a lot about the internal politics of certain groups and gives clues as to what to expect in the near future. In the same way that Julius Caesar’s memoirs about the Gallic Wars don’t necessarily give a reliable account of the facts, they certainly tell you all you need to know about how propaganda worked in Ancient Rome at the time, what people thought was important and what made them, “look good,” to their audience, making it an invaluable historical document, for those who know how to read it. ✌️
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