BUILDING HOUSES ON STRAW POLLS: A BRIEF LOOK AT SOME CURRENT STATISTICAL REPORTING BY JOURNALISTS IN NEW ZEALAND

This paper considers how New Zealand journalists report political polls. Two recent newspaper articles are featured. Perhaps not surprisingly we have detected a tendency for journalists to focus on sample size, to misunderstand the concept of margins of error, and to have little idea as to whether a result is generalisable. We also consider the importance of non–respondents. We wonder if journalists question the validity of survey results they have been given. We ask the question: could a “non–random” convenience survey have as much validity as a more formal survey conducted by a specialist research company?