Fake Pollster Chronicles: HEY! This one's on our side! (UPDATED)
So we know readers come to Caracas Chronicles looking for the finest in Fake Pollster news so, today, we have a special treat: apparently some guys on our side are getting in on this game!
Meet the (either self-parodically or incredibly-cluelessly named) Instituto Delphos, who apparently think calling up 100 people on the phone and asking them what they thought of Monday night’s debate constitutes a proper poll.
Turns out 16.4% of their sample thought HCR won the debate…and if you’re wondering how a poll with a sample size = 100 can have fractions of a percent in their responses, you’re already smarter than the people these jokers are trying to bamboozle.
Once more, there’s no Google trail suggesting Instituto Delphos is a thing. They don’t even meet the abysmally low International Consulting Services standard of providing a warm body journos can quote by name. Still and all, Globovision reports their “results” utterly acritically, without even a throw-away line about how this polling institute is new in the field.
Say it with me now…por eso es que estamos como estamos…
Update: Joke’s on me – turns out Delphos is the unserious arm of a serious polling company. I still think this poll is a methodological wreck, though. It’s not just that with a sample-size = 100 you get a 9.8 point margin of error on a poll where the gap between the candidates is in the 2-4 point range, it’s that asking people to self-report whether they watched the debate and expecting them to tell truth is the kind of thing that would (and should) get you an F in an Intro to Research Methodology course anywhere…
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