Thread: polls

as some of yall may know, i'm doin a paper on the NRA.
One of the books that I came across suggests that the power of the NRA is due to the intense negative press that the group often gets in the national media.

It explains that there is a paradox: apparently, there is overwhelming support in the polls for harsher gun control legislation, however, the NRA seems to be getting more and more powerful.

This begs the question: of what importance are polls? If someone truly cared about a subject, say gun control or privacy rights, then they would join a group and work or donate money to that group. If they idn't really care about it, then the question is what prompted them to start thinking about it, and thus, it is a result of the question that you get the overwhelming response of more gun control legislation.

On the other hand, polls do have a significance in the broader social movements. If someone answers 'strongly agree' on whether they think that the proper role of the government is to regulate abortions, then that puts them closer and closer ideologically into the social movement that espouses 'moral values'; in short, by asking people if they have opinions, on the polls, you are strengthening the various social movements that you are concerned with.


So: why do we care about polls? About polling data? Does the term 'public opinion' actually mean something tangible? I do not really think that it does.

Originally Posted by The_Bear

as some of yall may know, i'm doin a paper on the NRA.
One of the books that I came across suggests that the power of the NRA is due to the intense negative press that the group often gets in the national media.

It explains that there is a paradox: apparently, there is overwhelming support in the polls for harsher gun control legislation, however, the NRA seems to be getting more and more powerful.

This begs the question: of what importance are polls? If someone truly cared about a subject, say gun control or privacy rights, then they would join a group and work or donate money to that group. If they idn't really care about it, then the question is what prompted them to start thinking about it, and thus, it is a result of the question that you get the overwhelming response of more gun control legislation.

On the other hand, polls do have a significance in the broader social movements. If someone answers 'strongly agree' on whether they think that the proper role of the government is to regulate abortions, then that puts them closer and closer ideologically into the social movement that espouses 'moral values'; in short, by asking people if they have opinions, on the polls, you are strengthening the various social movements that you are concerned with.

So: why do we care about polls? About polling data? Does the term 'public opinion' actually mean something tangible? I do not really think that it does.

Yes, it tells you whether you are in line with views. This is important since it's a research on people who actually will be directly deciding or incurring the costs involved in anything. In this case, whether or not morality or anything else may matter, it is important that as someone looking to do something that affects the population, you ought to remain in the loop regarding the needs and wants of the people you will be working for.