Pubdate: Thu, 16 Oct 2014
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2014 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

MY CANNABIS POLL IS BETTER THAN YOURS

Next time you read or watch a news story about a survey or poll, stop 
reading or turn it off. It doesn't mean anything. It won't help you 
understand anything. You're better off watching videos of parkouring 
goats or hawks knocking drones out of the sky.

Polls, which are surveys of public opinion taken from a select 
sample, have become staples of newspaper, television and online news. 
We're inundated by them. Each is subject to its own methodology, bias 
and interpretation, and I'll grant that they can offer simple 
snapshots into peoples' beliefs or positions at a given time. Today 
they are much more than that, with hundreds of polls conducted daily 
on nearly every subject.

Besides that there are probably too many of them out there, one of 
the problems is that most media outlets - print, television and 
especially Internet - seem to feed off polls and surveys, generously 
using them, especially in election coverage. A casual look at the 
polls of Colorado citizens on their feelings about cannabis really 
leaves you wondering why media, which often do little more than 
regurgitate survey press releases and add misleading headlines, won't 
just come out and say that polls are often wrong or unreliable.

The classic poll story, of course, is that of Nate Silver, who rated 
other pollsters according to their biases and methods and wound up 
predicting correctly every legislative race in 2012.

Who could forget a pitifully out-of touch Karl Rove phoning Fox News 
on election night after it called the election for Barack Obama 
because his polls were telling him that Mitt Romney was going to win? 
If polls are so important, why are so many so wrong so often?

Let's take a quick look at five surveys done since Colorado's 
cannabis legalization began Jan. 1. Never mind that legalization is 
only in its 10th month, pollsters have still been busy asking 
residents different questions and media have come up with fascinating 
ways to interpret the statistics to their own liking.

A Quinnipac University telephone survey released on Feb. 10, fewer 
than six weeks after retail stores were allowed to open, asked 
whether Colorado voters felt legalization might hurt the state's 
image. Fifty-one percent of voters agreed and 38 percent disagreed, 
with Republicans opposed 73-18 percent and Democrats supportive by a 
57-36 percentage.

A survey done by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling released 
on March 19 found 57 percent of state voters supporting legalization 
and 35 percent opposed. A second Quinnipac poll on April 28 asked 
whether voters supported the law, and found, by a 54-43 percentage, 
that they did.

Then the Marist Institute released one on Sept. 7 which found 55 
percent support among Colorado residents and 41 percent opposed, with 
eight percent actively trying to overturn the legislation.

Finally, on Sept. 17 a Suffolk University/USA Today poll asked likely 
voters whether Colorado should repeal legal cannabis. This one found 
50.2 percent saying they disagree with the decision to legalize and 
46 percent in support, and 49 percent disapproving of the way the 
state is managing legalization.

The big thing to note here is who the surveys asked.

"Voters are those who in response to a standard poll question say 
they are "registered to vote in their precinct or election district," 
according to the Gallup Poll FAQ page. "Likely voters are that group 
of individuals who the company can estimate [my emphasis] are most 
likely to actually vote."

That's an important distinction, and it means that the polls are 
asking two different subsets of people. The two polls that asked 
voters and the one that asked state residents each found about the 
same support for legalization as there had been in 2012. The Suffolk 
poll of likely voters indicates slightly lower numbers.

Given that most polls offer a few percentage points either way as 
margins of error, the numbers are actually pretty consistent. That 
didn't stop some media outlets from trumpeting the Suffolk poll.

"Colorado voters may be having second thoughts about the legalization 
of marijuana," 9News wrote. "A slight majority of voters [50.2 
percent] say they do not agree with the decision to legalize 
recreational marijuana while 46 percent continue to support the deci sion.

Nearly 49 percent do not approve of how the state is managing 
legalized pot, compared to 42 percent who approve."

But the Suffolk poll, remember, asked likely voters, not voters, as 
the story says. This is mixing apples and oranges and needs to be 
noted when we're talking polls and public opinion.

The Gazette in Colorado Springs took the Suffolk results a step 
farther. It quoted a national telephone random sample survey 
conducted by the conservative Public Religion Research Institute that 
found national support for legalized marijuana falling from 51 
percent in 2013 to 44 percent this year.

"Two recent polls show that support of legalized marijuana has 
waned," the story ominously states. "And that there is unhappiness in 
the way regulations are handled by the state." Really, all it "shows" 
is that one telephone survey of people outside Colorado says support 
has fallen a few percentage points.

Oh, and by the way, the Public Religion Research Institute study 
contradicts 2014 surveys by Pew Research, NBC News, CBS, CNN, Wall 
Street Journal and Gallup polls, all of which indicate continued, 
growing support for legalizing cannabis nationwide.

And see how easy that was to use polls to make my point?

The only reliable figures are that 1,383,139 Colorado voters (55.32 
percent) voted for Amendment 64 in 2012. The rest is just shifting sand.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom