ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to make consumers aware of the bad polls "out there" and to make it very clear why they are in fact bad polls. Good polls represent reasonable, reliable guesses, whereas bad polls constitute wild, unreliable guesses. But the reality is that reputable pollsters hate bad polls, and seek to eliminate them because they can really ruin the image of the profession and eventually destroy the polling industry. The chapter focuses on major problems and methodological shortcomings of these polls: straw polls, "street-corner" or shopping mall polls, media "call-in" polls, biased interest-group polls, "push" polls, and Internet polls. Bad polls are not just bad because they have crippling methodological flaws; they are bad because they distort public opinion and are a genuine disservice to people who rely on them. The personalities of people can affect refusal rates, and refusal rates have always posed a serious problem to pollsters.
