CNN Junk Science: “Audience Reaction” Meters Entertainment, Not Polling

[One Sweet World]

Death by 1000 Papercuts has a great point about those CNN graphics gimmicks: "It’s Entertainment; not Polling"

Still wonder what-the-heck those squiggly lines are at the bottom of your CNN screen during the Presidential debates?
David W. Moore, the author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes The Truth Behind The Polls, and former senior editor at the Gallup Poll for thirteen years will tell you the folly of this pseudo-science.

Mr. Moore lampoons CNNs use of live Audience Reaction Meters during the Presidential debates as junk science. He tells you where the 25-year-old hand meter technology came from and how it’s used in the debates, is completely counter to the concept of focus groups. He writes, are designed to obtain in-depth responses from the participants, who actually discuss the issues with each other and arrive at more considered views than what polls normally measure.

Moore argues that CNN has presented a 32 member groups reactions to candidates comments (shown in squiggly lines <0-100 with 0 equaling bad and 100, good>) as representative of American without one scintilla of scientific basis.

Should Americans really care what 32 people from Ohio think?

What a silly idea.

[baldguy]

1. And if McCain had won, they'd be saying how reliable & accurate audience polling is.

[DJ13]

2. You know who really hates those meters?

The GOP, as their way of politicking never scores well.

If you watched the last debate on CNN you would have seen how poorly McCain was scoring when he spoke compared to Obama.

Instead of using those metered responses as a learning tool to come to grips with what the American voters really want, its easier for the GOP and their supporters to lambast it as "unscientific".