Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with poll

Riddle me this...

miss lynnster — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:58:28 -0800

Creating custom quizzes, polls and surveys for a blog... your experiences? I want to start putting more fun, interactive, and educational features on HiddenLA.com. I just tried putting a poll on there using the WP-polls plugin but I'm not sure I'm digging it so far. Is there a better application or plug-in that you use?

I would also like to do some really interesting quizzes, but so far I haven't found an application that is really great with customizing details. I started a few but was disappointed with the how results looked and never finished them.

I'd love to hear any suggestions you have. Thanks! :)

How do I create an online poll which users can permanently add to?

kmccormi — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:41:10 -0800

How can I create an online HTML form poll, preferably for free, wherein the list of multiple choices can grow when users decide to add to the list of choices? Many poll creators allow for the creation of multiple choice polls that give the viewer the option of selecting "other" with a text field for comments. However, usually this entry does not then become visible to viewers who visit thereafter.

I want my list of choices to be able to grow. If a user sees an existing choice that he likes, he can add his vote to that one, but if he doesn't see an existing choice I would like him to be able to add that choice permanently to the list. Any user who visits afterward will see his choice in the list and be able to vote for it.

I also would love for this poll to be clean, ad-free, and preferably embeddable into a blog or personal site. Does anything like this exist? Thanks.

How much would you pay for a Homemade Scrunchie?

royalsong — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:52:38 -0800

Poll-Filter: How much would you pay for this? (Example 2) I hope to sell these homemade crocheted scrunchies/hair ties at an upcoming fair (I don't have to pay anything for the table). I'm having difficulties deciding on a final price though.

Cost of Materials (estimated):

25 (Ouchless) Elastic Hair Ties: $6.00
1 Ball of Yarn: $3.00

I can probably get 6 scrunchies out of each ball. If my math is right, that means each scrunchie takes about 75 cents to make.

But I'm also interested in how much is "too much" - If you seen a bunch of these in different colors laid out before you - What is the number that is too high for you to consider reasonable?

Email poll results

mtstover — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:13:25 -0800

I will be at a client dinner tonight - and I want to follow exit poll results via email on my blackberry. Does the Hivemind know where I can signup for said email updates?

How to attend the Nov 4th Obama Rally?

garlic — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:52:27 -0800

What do I need to do to be able to go to the Obama rally in Grant Park on November 4th? I know from previous questions (here and here) to get there early, and be prepared to stay late. I know living in Chicago to prepare for the weather. But what I'm not clear on is if I need a ticket for this rally, and if so how to get it.

Do you have any advice on how to get myself into this Rally?

Win percentage?

PTCHFRKR — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:31:20 -0800

What does 'win percentage', as displayed on polling site fivethirtyeight.com, mean, and how is it calculated?

You fill out a form, then see where everyone else is from who also filled out the form.

Wild_Eep — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:08:24 -0800

Is there a WordPress plugin that will let me make forms for people to fill in, and then dump the results to the database instead of emailing the results to me? I want reports with Google Charts (specifically the US and World maps). There are at least a dozen different survey/questionnaire/poll/form plugins, but nearly all of them merely email submissions to a given address.

I want to be able to maintain real-time statistics about who has filled out a form so that I can tie it to the APIs from Google Chart and produce maps for my site. Ideally once I set this up, it should run without any interaction from me. (No exporting data to create a report manually). I'm not worried about spoofing for now.

So far I've only found two contenders:

Surveygizmo, which is close but doesn't seem to support the mapping report that I'm interested in.

SurveyFly, which hasn't been updated to support recent versions of WordPress.

Is there something out there that I'm missing?

Polling procedure question

josher71 — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:00:46 -0800

I was talking about the polls in the presidential election yesterday and someone mentioned that the polls are skewed towards McCain because the polling companies only call people who still have landlines, or generally older people (I guess). She claimed this was for geographic demographic reasons. Is it true that polling companies do this and don't call cell phones?

How do people think the U.S. population is distributed?

escabeche — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:10:56 -0800

I recently read the startling result that, in a recent New York Times poll, 8% of white respondents and 17% of black respondents said that the U.S. population was more than 50% black. This got me wondering what the corresponding numbers are for other ethnic group -- but for the life of me I couldn't find any data. What percent of the U.S. population does the median American think is Hispanic? Asian? Jewish? Muslim? Foreign-born? Interesting examples from other countries also welcome, of course.

How is margin of error applied to an opinion poll?

so_necessary — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:06:00 -0800

When a preference poll has a certain margin of error, what are the minimum/maximum results? Take the following poll as an example:

Clinton 47%
Obama 43%
M.O.E: 4%

How is the margin of error applied to the prior percentages? Is that 4% either side (e.g: Clinton between 43% and 51%) or total (between 49% and 45%)? Or it the "gap" between the two - is a complete reversal (Clinton down 4, Obama up 4) within the M.O.E, or is it at most a movement of 2%+/- each to 45% with a maximum gap of 41% vs 49%?

More confusingly, in a poll like this:

Obama 46, Clinton 45, Undecided 8 (M.O.E: 4%)

How does it all work? (And why is a 21-yr-old Brit addicted to your convoluted primary process?!)

Should I Eat This Website?

andoatnp — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:34:44 -0800

Can you help make my "Should I Eat It?" website awesome? A number of weeks ago I was inspired by my favorite type of AskMetafilter questions to create a site where people could post "Should I Eat it?" questions and others could provide answers. The recent MetaTalk post inspired me to resurrect said project and make it a reality, and I'm looking for advice about what all of you would like to see on such a site.

Currently, it's a very simple concept, done in blogspot, where there is an email address for people to send me their "should I eat it?" questions and I then post them along with any pictures, and people comment away. Pictures are encouraged, as they make the questions that much more fun. I also have an AOL IM and GTalk account set up for rapid turn around on questions of extreme timeliness. Other than a sidebar with some links to webpages with information about spoilage and food safety, that was it.

Any other features or ideas I should incorporate? I considered some sort of built in poll, but I think most of these questions aren't strictly binary, so it would be unnecessary and overly restrictive to include a Yes/No option with each question. Besides, the fun is in the comments.

Even if Blogger could adequately handle everything I would need from the site, does it look lame in today's day and age to host something on blogspot?

Also, does anyone know what sort of language I would need to protect me and any answerers from all legal liability if someone gets advice to eat something and then get sick?

Any other thoughts on how to bring the joy of "Should I eat it?" questions to a new site would be greatly appreciated.

[And yes, Metafilter is credited throughout the site as being the inspiration for the idea.]

How to poll the public on the Web?

rwhe — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:43:49 -0800

Where can I go on the Web to create an informal public poll to gather data for my next book, which happens to be about board games? I'm currently co-authoring a book of board and card games that can be played with "usual equipment", which includes things like standard decks of cards, Chess sets, six-sided dice, and so on. Almost everybody has most of those at home. There are some borderline cases, however, such as Chinese Checkers sets, double-nine dominoes or better, Scrabble sets, and so on. We would like to poll our readers to see which of these sets of equipment is really common, and which is not.

Because we are writing this book for an intelligent general audience, it's important that we don't inadvertently include equipment that only gamers have, such as 30-sided dice. Therefore, we can't just go to a site like BoardGameGeek or a gaming Yahoo group to ask this question. The people who are likely to answer the poll at those sites will not be representative; they will probably own far more game equipment than most people.

I would like to set up a poll and watch the results filter in for a couple of weeks, but I'm not married to the idea of a Web survey; if there is some more efficient or convenient way to gather the information we need, I'd like to hear about it. Scientific rigor is also welcome, but not absolutely necessary.

Thanks!

Recycled content? Energy Use? None of the Above?

Eringatang — Thu, 24 May 2007 13:49:38 -0800

Looking for stats on what people THINK is most important in a "green" product. NOT looking for what is ACTUALLY most important.
Looking for polls of the type:

Which do you think helps the environment the most?
a) Buying products with recycled content
b) Buying products that were produced locally
c) Buying less products
d) Buying products with organic content
e) etc, etc

Or, other incidental info from books and other sources. References to technical papers appreciated as well. Thanks as always hivemind.

Online Survey widget applet

Dag Maggot — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:21:57 -0800

I'm looking for an embeddable free customer survey type applet/widget. Something similar to PollDaddy but one that will let me ask a series of questions. Is there anything out there like that?

Rating-type poll

dagnyscott — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:22:42 -0800

What's the easiest way to add a "Hot or Not" style poll to my website? Any sort of free scripts or the like to provide a rating system poll (1-10).

Poll teh Geist

fourcheesemac — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:18:06 -0800

WebPoll Filter: I need a cheap (or free) online poll service that can collect at least 1000 responses and prevent revoting (using cookies or IPs, it doesn't have to be highly secure). I'm willing to pay not to have advertising and to get a clean look and good reports, but the choices are bewildering. I don't need a subscription, as this is a one-time deal, so a single per-poll price is best. I do not want to host this myself, so I'm not looking for scripts, but would love if I could put generated HTML for the poll on my site rather than have users visit the polling site. The subject has come up before on AskMe, but the choices change. The free options I've found mostly seem to limit responses to a few hundred (e.g. SurveyMonkey). The pay options mostly have more features (and a longer time commitment) than I need. Extra kisses for something free but with minimal or tasteful advertising, or advertising limited to the results view.

Foreign aid: threat or menace?

richg — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 17:11:16 -0800

Foreign aid: threat or menace? Help me track down this possibly apocryphal story. I heard or read this years ago: A poll was taken about foreign aid. Most people said less should be spent on it. Then they asked how much the US currently spends on foreign aid? Average estimate was 15%. Then they asked how much should be spent? Average answer was 5%. The kicker is that actual spending on foreign aid is about 1%.

Dreamweaver Survey/Poll

madmath — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 15:10:26 -0800

I'm trying to create a poll on my website. I don't want to link to surveymonkey. I have created the poll in Dreamweaver. However, how do I set the submit button to show the results?

Why do polls use "heading in the right direction" vs "on the wrong track?"

Triode — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:43:59 -0800

Why is the polling question framed "Headed in the right direction" versus "On the wrong track?" It seems to me that political polls regularly use the right direction/wrong track question. I know they put considerable effort into not biasing the questions, and the phrasing must be intentional. But the given options don't seem diametrically opposed to me - rather, "direction" is analog and "track" is digital. Furthermore, I see the need for an question to gauge the respondant's overall perception, but why do pollsters use this exact phrase each time, spanning many so many poll topics? Is this a meta-poll question to cross correlate the answers to life, the universe, and everything?

Blog Feature Filter

Mroz — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 11:46:09 -0800

BlogFeatureFilter: I'm looking for two features for my website. 1. A way to link to a google map that has 10-20 of my local spots marked off and labeled. I basically want to be able to add those little markers where I want with labels of what the spots are. 2. A poll that either doesn't display results immediately, or one that doesn't show them to anyone but me. Or any good polls that people can recommend.

Recommend free website poll scripts.

Dick Paris — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 11:34:29 -0800

I'd like to set up a simple poll (3 choices + show results) on a web site I maintain. I would like to host it on our server and pleasantly integrate it into the site (i.e. customisable css would be good). I've looked into some free poll scripts and reviewed the read me files but am dealing with things I know nothing about. Thoughts? Assistance [+]? I don't know if this is appropriate to mention on AskMe, but if someone can offer detailed, in-depth assistance and wants to work out a wish-list-purchase-barter-type-deal I am open to the possibility. The organization is non-profit and I am the volunteer web master but am willing to kick-in something for the hour or so of work I imagine assistance might take. I'm do not fear the scripts, I just have no idea where to start and am willing to learn.

Does anybody know of any expansive polling of Canadians with respect to their feelings on foreign military intervention, particularily in Afghanistan?

loquax — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 14:13:15 -0800

Does anybody know of any expansive polling of Canadians with respect to their feelings on foreign military intervention, particularily in Afghanistan? Of course, the more detailed the better. If that's too specific, can anyone point me to general repositories of Canadian polling data that allow free access (if such places exist)? Thanks as always! I should say that all I've been able to find myself are expired or very brief articles, and the polling companies themselves which charge for access.

Polling center PAC question - why didn't the MoveOn guy have to leave?

caution live frogs — Tue, 02 Nov 2004 04:59:20 -0800

ElectionFairnessFilter. So i just voted (yay) and noticed something odd - a man in the polling place sitting quietly behind a MoveOn PAC sign. I didn't think we in the US could have anyone inside the polling place advocating a specific voting paradigm (even if I do think it's a good paradigm to support), and so I wasn't surprised when a lady complained and an officious-looking man walked over to talk to the seated gentleman - but after a short conversation, they let him stay. Anyone know what gives here? Why would they not ask him to leave?

How does IMDB rate their top 250 films?

jdroth — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:45:35 -0800

This has been bugging me for a while: On IMDB, why are some highly-rated films not listed in the top 250? [more inside] For example, The Station Agent, rated 8.1 out of 10 (in 3833 votes), is ranked #231 on the list. But The Fog of War, rated 8.4 out of 10 (in 2047 votes), doesn't make the list. What gives?

As an aside: what's the highest-rated non-top-250 movie you can find? The Fog of War is high, yes, but higher still is Pride and Prejudice, 9.2 out of 10 (in 4667 votes). That's higher than the film ostensibly #1: The Godfather.

(I'm assuming Pride and Prejudice is disallowed because it's made for television, but that's a shame. It really is quite good.)

Are there other highly-rated films that don't make the top 250 for some reason?

Who was the most unppular president in modern US history?

inksyndicate — Sun, 16 May 2004 16:58:20 -0800

Who was the most unpopular president in modern U.S. history? Who had the lowest poll ratings at any one time?