In today’s Roll Call, The Winston Group’s David Winston addresses recent contradictory polling results, the ways data are being used to validate narratives rather than to enhance critical understanding, and how to tell whether numbers are being manipulated to validate a narrative.
Survey results are so all over the map these days that politicos and pundits can find public survey data to support almost any issue, position or political narrative out there. But in the process, those results defeat the very purpose of survey research: situation awareness.
Trump’s poll numbers are a case in point. As of Wednesday at noon on Real Clear Politics, the last 12 public surveys from mid-August to the beginning of September showed President Donald Trump’s job approval anywhere from +10 to -18. That’s a 28-point difference. No wonder people get confused.
Read the full piece here.
