Anyone who knows anything about polling will tell you that you can produce dramatic swings in results by how you phrase the question. A common and blatant method of skewing a poll is to build arguments for one side into the question.
Public Policy Polling has done a poll on the Pennsylvania Governor's death penalty moratorium that is so blatantly worded that it reads like a parody of bad polling. If an instructor gave his students an assignment to "draft the worst poll question you possibly can," it would read something like this:
They also asked the extremely biased "which punishment" question we have noted many times before, implying that the respondent must choose a single punishment for all murderers.
The press seems to be lapping this up, uncritically reporting the poll result with no mention of the extreme bias in the wording. See, e.g., this article in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
The real news here is that support for the death penalty remains so robust that even a badly worded question like this can't generate a substantial majority. No one seems to be getting that.
Public Policy Polling has done a poll on the Pennsylvania Governor's death penalty moratorium that is so blatantly worded that it reads like a parody of bad polling. If an instructor gave his students an assignment to "draft the worst poll question you possibly can," it would read something like this:
Governor Wolf has temporarily paused executions in Pennsylvania until concerns about the risk of executing innocent people, the high cost of the death penalty, and serious issues of unfairness can be addressed by a bipartisan study commission. Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the decision to temporarily pause executions?Yet even skewed to the max they didn't crack a majority. "Strongly support" and "somewhat support" only totaled 50%.
They also asked the extremely biased "which punishment" question we have noted many times before, implying that the respondent must choose a single punishment for all murderers.
The press seems to be lapping this up, uncritically reporting the poll result with no mention of the extreme bias in the wording. See, e.g., this article in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
The real news here is that support for the death penalty remains so robust that even a badly worded question like this can't generate a substantial majority. No one seems to be getting that.
As I noted a while back, condescension and deceit -- i.e., the ingredients of this poll -- are the inventory of the opposition.
http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/2015/02/the-weapons-of-choice-for-sent.html
To be more blunt about it, they lie in one form or another. Sometimes it's directly (as in the Roger Keith Coleman case or "Hands up, don't shoot!"), and sometimes more cleverly. This poll is on the clever side, as these things go, of lying.
How about a poll like this: "Joe Schmoe murdered a ten year-old girl with a hammer so she wouldn't tell her parents that he had raped her. There is no question of his guilt, which he confessed, and which is independently proved by DNA and other forensic evidence. Governor X has delayed his execution, which was challenged but approved by the courts, because of general questions about the fairness and accuracy of the death penalty. Do you approve of Governor X's delay?"
That is a question I promise you you'll never see. Specifics tend to get left on the editing room floor.