Posts Tagged: polls

Media / Reviews / Technology — Comments
9
Feb 10

iPad: Poll Numbers and Spin, or Why You Should Pay Attention

I got an email from Telecom TV with the screaming headline:

Oh dear! 52 per cent of consumers don’t want an iPad

I know, right? So I click the link and start reading. Keep in mind that Martyn Warwick will never be called a fan of Apple or Steve Jobs.

?Last month, before the new device was launched, an earlier survey showed that 26 per cent of consumers who were aware of the hype surrounding the imminent arrival of the iPad had no interest in buying one.

Now a follow-up study indicates that, as the Retrevo blog puts it, Apple has suffered “a failure to convince any new buyers to consider the iPad.” It adds, “Not only did Apple fail to convince new buyers, it may have lost many potential buyers who now say they don’t think they need an Apple tablet computer.”

That’s because, to quote Retrevo again, “Consumers lost interest after the [iPad] announcement. Retrevo’s study asked consumers whether or not they had heard about the tablet before the tablet was introduced and again after the announcement. The word definitely got out as the number of respondents saying they had heard about the tablet rose from 48% shortly before the announcement to over 80% after the media frenzy on January 27th.”

Wow, right? But guess what? I’m not a tech person and I’ve never heard of Retrevo before this article. I’m not going to just take this at face value. I want to know the polling size, how the people were selected, the questions…in other words, the details. So, I searched for “Retrevo ipad survey” (without the quotes) and noticed a link to MacDailyNews at the top of the search results touting the same exact survey.

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Election 2008 — Comments
21
Nov 07

Polls are stupid

No, acutally the people who respond to these polls are stupid. I understand the average American, or rather most Americans either willfully don’t pay attention to politics or pretend that they know something based on a 30 sec clip run on CNN. I got that. That being said, it doesn’t help that pollsters decided to waste money on incredibly dumb and pointless polls. Why? Because people fall for the majority answer all the time, not wanting to be “left out”. Americans are conformists at heart. That why people fell for that stupid GOP paid “poll” over who’d they prefer to have a beer with. Sheeple never even bothered to see who requested and paid for the poll and then regurgitated, “Well, I’d rather have a beer with Bush.” like they thought of it or something. (I should note that I almost got into a fistfight with two guys at Yankee Doodles in Santa Monica over this subject, and yes, I started it.)

Which brings me to the AP-Yahoo! poll. The headline on Yahoo!says that people think that Obama is more likeable than Guiliani. That’s a duh. That’s like asking “Would you prefer a fine 7 course meal or the stale french fries under my kid’s carseat?”. In reading the responses from some of the people you get this:

“I’d rather have a president that’s going to get in somebody’s face if he’s got a problem with them or another country,” says Stokes.

Guess what he’s registered as? :\

Oddly enough, Stokes (who is a Republican) has fallen for the Guiliani 9/11 myth, though he would prefer to bring John Edwards on a family vaction (WTF???). There’s other dichotomies, such as the Obama supporter who would prefer to go bowling with Romney. I’m not even going to wonder how that subject came up. Is beer too ‘99? I’m dying to know the actual questions asked of the respondents. I’m sure they had to pick someone from the other camp to fill in the blanks of the political Mad-Lib.

Naturally, since the media decided months ago that Clinton and Guiliani are the frontrunners, they have a pretty poll that proves them right. People seemed resigned to this finality, probably not realizing that the media decided our nominees back in March.

The poll apparently covered a lot of points, even going so far as to ask the respondents to rate themselves on their outlook on life. So apparently all 8 Huckabee supporters are deliriously happy. Meanwhile, Clinton supporters, we’re told, are mostly low-income so they’re a pretty sad lot.

And I’m left wondering, “How the flaming flapjack is any of this important?”