In this post I look at classic book on understanding public opinion. Edward Bernays’ Crystalling Public Opinion. Some Advice Has Stood The Test Of Time In Helping Understand Public Opinion Firstly, this book clearly has a decent amount of the material that has stood the test of time pretty well. As far as PR precepts…
Category: Polling
What Caused The Classic Polling Disaster?
In presidential election polling 1936 stands out as a uniquely bad disaster. What caused the classic polling pisaster? 1936, The Worst Ever Polling Disaster? In 1936 The Literary Digest made a prediction that Republican Alf Landon would beat the incumbent Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a landslide. This rates as arguably the biggest disaster…
Do You Trust Business?
Movie villains are often business people. So do you trust business? Evil Business People The remake of the Magnificent Seven was understandably keen to change the villain from the, let’s just say dated, villain portrayal in the original. The writer went for an evil businessman. Audiences seemed fine with it. They find it plausible that…
Canadian Voting Behavior
Canada votes in a general election on Monday. It seems a good time to consider what drives voter choice. What do we know of Canadian Voting Behavior? What Drives Canadian Voting Behavior? There are multiple explanations and most have at least some support. One popular theory is that people vote for the leaders of parties….
Understanding Numbers
Understanding numbers is vital to so many parts of life. It is a shame many otherwise sensible people don’t seem to take numbers seriously. Numbers Allow You To Understand Magnitude When I managed the finances of a political party the BBC’s political editor explained on TV that donations totaling 6 million pounds would run my…
A Reason To Be Cheerful
This post from 2013 is a hopeful one about declining overt bias found in polling. While we have had reasons to worry in the intervening years I still stand by the idea that declining overt bias is a good thing. We may not be perfect. I think this is pretty obvious to all, but, at…
