The survey, conducted by Nanos Research for CTV News and The Globe and Mail, found more than two-thirds of people in the Prairies support putting tariffs on oil, natural gas and electricity.
“Well, I think it’s a garbage poll,” Smith said at an unrelated press conference on Tuesday.
“What if we were to ask Albertans or Canadians this: ‘Would you support export tariffs if it meant the U.S. would retaliate by shutting off Line 5 and leaving Ontario and Quebec without gasoline or aviation fuel at all?’ I think you’d get a different answer.”
Yeah, polls are untrustworthy at best, outright manipulative at worst. It’s not like they ask every person in the population. How questions are worded matters nearly as much as who’s answering. And, like any kind of statistical data, the answers to a poll can be twisted to say almost anything.
It’s okay to just say you don’t understand how statistics works.
While I’m not extremely well versed in statistics, I’m just a lowly Stone Mason after all, I believe that it’s quite common knowledge that how data is collected and presented can easily twist what it says.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/socialpolicy/2020/11/04/how-misused-statistics-can-harm-democracy/
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4844680-political-misinformation-data/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17457289.2020.1740716#abstract
https://bigthink.com/the-present/consequences-of-political-polling/
Absolutely. Much like Cardinal Richelieu said, anything can be twisted to your desires, but assuming the only accurate polling is complete polling is incorrect and infeasible if not impossible.
I get that, wasn’t really what I was trying to say, but looking at what I wrote… definitely comes off that way…
Alright, that’s fair. Here’s a quote that kind of meets in the middle: Some people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post - not for illumination but for support.