Woody Allen included an old Catskills/borscht belt joke in Annie Hall: “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” ‘The other one says,’ “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”‘
This is my problem with opinion polling today: I’m a huge consumer of opinion survey data, yet think a lot of it is crap, or of limited probity and use for a number of reasons. There are two problems: construction of the survey, and sampling. Much depends on the construction of a survey. This is especially true on the issue of abortion, where the presentation of the various aspects of the issue and the sequence of the questions affect the results significantly.
Sampling has become a larger problem. Since so many people don’t have landline phones, or don’t answer them or hang up if it is pollster calling, getting a proper sample has become a bigger problem, while the number of polls has increased. Most polls now used mixed sampling methods—live phone calls, internet only, texts, emails, etc. Here’s how Pew breaks down the trends over the last two decades.
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