{"id":1274,"date":"2008-06-02T09:08:29","date_gmt":"2008-06-02T14:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2017-03-03T01:11:17","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T06:11:17","slug":"dont-take-the-dnt-online-polls-to-the-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=1274","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t take the DNT online polls to the bank"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rob Karwath, The Duluth Trib&#8217;s editor, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/articles\/index.cfm?id=67650&#038;section=Columnists&#038;columnist=Rob%20Karwath&#038;freebie_check&#038;CFID=41883669&#038;CFTOKEN=57971119&#038;jsessionid=8830f42cf83d243f504b\">wrote a column <\/a>on Saturday downplaying the validity of their online polls. Specificially he was referring to a poll in which <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=1149\">65% of the participant<\/a>s said they favored the passage of Mike Jaros&#8217; bill to require a referendum on the Red Plan. Its no longer on their website but I believe about 650 people voted &#8211; over twice as many <a href=\"http:\/\/www.letduluthvote.com\/thesurvey.htm\">as Johnson Controls surveyed last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>None of the heavy hitters for the District seem to want to know what Duluth&#8217;s voters think about the Red Plan. The Board has nixed a vote two years running. It has sought to prevent a non binding referendum from taking place after rejecting Let Duluth Vote&#8217;s petition. A professional survey would only cost about $3,000. This year they have spent three times that much on advertising in the Trib alone. <\/p>\n<p>The Trib&#8217;s reporter assures me that under no circumstances would the Editorial staff allow their coverage of the story be affected by advertising revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Tell that to the folks who watch Rupert Murdoch&#8217;s Fox News.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;m not sure to which other polls he was referring. [ <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=1204\">here<\/a> and here ]But when it comes to results of our polls at duluthnewstribune.com, the simple answer is: Don&#8217;t take them to the bank.<\/p>\n<p>Our online polls, like those of most other Web sites, are far from scientific. Readers who respond vote voluntarily. And the sample size can vary from a few dozen to thousands on a hot subject.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re not the kind of polls you occasionally see in our paper that we take pains to make statistically significant. That means ensuring a random sample. It also means collecting enough respondents to say the results would be the same, within an acceptable margin of error, as if we had asked everyone in town.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rob Karwath, The Duluth Trib&#8217;s editor, wrote a column on Saturday downplaying the validity of their online polls. Specificially he was referring to a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1274"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20922,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions\/20922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}