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Originally Posted by Carth
I'm 64, lived and worked in the UK all my life. I have never ever* been asked to take part in one of these 'representative sample' type polls.
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For the most part, you are generally grateful that you do not receive mass amounts of calls / mailing / literature all day every day asking for your "opinion" on stuff after you do it for like the first day so be grateful. I have been asked to participate in the odd survey system and even though I will not get SPAM as I was invited to join, and I did I will never see it as anything but.
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I guess they're really 'selective' on who they think a representative sample is
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Yeah to try get an accurate gauge of the public I sense they try make it as representative of the voters but they don't usually account for how "likely" they are to vote in the first place. That is why voter enthusiasm is so much more important than just a random selection of folks based on ideological representation. Even at that, they have to try estimate what the % levels of every party and ideology that is likely to vote as a total proportionate amount of the vote, which is not always easy to do. Then, they need to replicate that as closely as they can into a small sample size. It is not as easy as it sounds - and why there is usually a margin of error of like 4 to 6%. (Sometimes more, but that is unusual).
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* I'm not including the countless silly and inane 'polls' that many websites ask you to take part in.
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Yeah, that takes out almost all "representative" mirroring of the electorate out of it.
If it is an open poll, for example I am pretty sure if you found the right site (Daily Express for example) you could get 90+% of readers to vote yes on anything anti-EU. If you asked Femen activists whether women should ever wear anything from the waist up I am sure the numbers would be pretty high against the idea.
Some sites require a log in verification that one user has one vote and a bunch of them (like broadsheet papers) require a subscription, and of those some are so methodical that they also have their own polling firm, on top of that. That makes it at least a little more accurate.
Though as and when there is a balanced viewership there is likely to be a more accurate representation of the public - unless it is over something so obvious as say...nazis and Hitler. Then you really have to get into the alt style sites like Stormfront to find anything positive, the other way.