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Tim Dower: The process of political polls
Polls are great. I love ‘em and I love the occasional surprise we get from them.
They're really useful in providing those snapshots of public opinion at any given moment.
And you'll be aware the political parties use them extensively, not just to see how they're tracking but for all sorts of nefarious stuff like testing out our reactions to policy ideas.
On top of that there's also a lot of research into the way leading figures are perceived, all part of the process of moulding and shaping them for maximum ballot-box efficiency.
But the thing about polls that we rarely take much notice of…
The skinny
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