QotD: The value of online polls

This is why, despite all the emails I've received urging me to write about Ron Paul's strong performance in the Internet polls, I haven't been covering it. I like Paul, but Internet polls are meaningless as a measurement of anything but the enthusiasm of a candidate's supporters. I don't think, as some do, that Paul's performance is purely a product of cheaters spamming sites with multiple votes. There has been some of that, but the congressman does well even when the multi-voters are ferreted out and their ballots removed from the results. I just don't think it means a lot to win one of these contests.

But I have to laugh when the creators of these unscientific surveys try to find ways to discount Paul's wins without admitting the polls themselves are near-useless. When it became clear that Paul was doing well in Fox's text-messaging poll after the debate Tuesday night, for example, Fox host Carl Cameron suggested the congressman's supporters were gaming the system. He did not pause to ponder the point of offering a system so easily gamed. Nor did he admit that if the votes for Paul didn't mean much, the same was true of the remainder of the results.

Jesse Walker, "What Internet Polls Are Good For", Hit and Run, 2007-05-17