Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Limits of Public Input

According to this Post piece:
Forget about the economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and saving Social Security: An online opinion survey released by the White House this week ranks legalizing pot, playing online poker and cracking down on Scientologists as far more important issues
It reflects the limits of the public involvement campaign by the Obama administration.

2 comments:

Professor Preposterous said...

Opt-in polling tends to attract people with strong opinions, and doesn't represent the interests of the population at large.

There are also groups that love to answer for "comedy." That is, they'll answer according to what they think would be most hilarious to report, not what they actually think.

Bill Harshaw said...

Yes, indeed. Though there's always the question of how a representative government balances the strongly held opinions of a minority against the weakly held views of a majority.