The issue: In Asher’s book Polling and the Public, he talks about polls and elections. He goes into detail about the different polls used during elections.
Major strength: Asher’s major strength in this reading is his section about focus groups. I had no idea that they used focus groups to help candidates with debates and seeing where they stand in the public’s eye. Most voters never hear about focus groups when it comes to polling but they are very important. Candidates usually take ten to twenty people that generally represent a broad demographic group and use them to their advantage. The most helpful use of a focus group is having the group sit down and watch a candidate’s debate and have the focus group comment about their strong points and what they could use to work on for their next debate. This helps the candidate hear what the general public thinks about the debate rather then just their campaign advisors. Sometimes the media will use focus groups but it is important to note that the media often fails to recognize the limitations of the focus groups. Focus groups suffer from not representing a broader population well when it comes to the media. It is important that the media does not see a focus group as the public’s whole opinion. There are both benefits and disadvantages to focus groups and Asher states these both very clearly in this chapter.
Major weakness: The major weakness of this chapter is the explanation of what is a push poll. I believe Asher did not explain this concept to the best of his ability. I had a lot of trouble understanding what a push poll is and I wish he would of gone into more depth with this section. He gives a lot of examples of push polling but he does not give a direct definition. Towards the end of the section he gives citizens a way to protect themselves from push polling. If he gave a definition then this section would be great but I had a very hard time understanding push polling.
Underlying assumption: The underlying assumption about elections and polls is that the way we poll people during elections is greatly changing due to the advances in our society. There are so many different ways that we can vote now-a-days that we are finding that some ways of polling that used to work really well are now failing due to the differences in how we vote. Exit polls are now no longer an accurate source because so many people can mail in their votes and some skew the data by saying they voted for a different person then they actually did. However, Asher has found that exit polls in general are an accurate source. The challenge is finding which poll will best fit what solution when it comes to polling and elections. Finally, Asher found that cultural reason affects many other countries when it comes to polling but in America it has little to no effect on us.
Provocative questions: If exit polls are shown to be extremely misleading and misrepresented of the data why are we still using them?
What is the definition of push polling?
Which election poll is the most effective?