Every time I see a reader/listener/viewer poll I want to tear out what little of my hair that remains. Despite the usual disclaimer that such polls are unscientific, they are worse than that; they damage the legitimacy of properly conducted polls.
The disclaimers have all the impact of the disclaimers delivered in a soft sprinted monotone at the end of commercials for some new miracle drug.
Often people don’t know what it takes to design a scientific poll, and they lump them all together. They defend their general distrust of everything they don’t agree with by reciting cliches like “Liars figure and figures lie.”
A Columbian staff member once told me that the newspaper’s polls were intended to provide its readers with information. I dispute that. They have no validity.