Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with poll

Choose the new face of Mount Rushmore (why?)

Gordafarin — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:52:34 -0800

Who or what is behind Rushmorevote.com? I've been seeing billboards around Cincinnati, Ohio asking people to vote for a new face to be added to Mount Rushmore. Obviously it's some sort of viral campaign or joke, but I can't find any further information about it. They've got a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter. When you answer the survey, they then ask several questions about your demographics and how you found it.

What are example of no confidence votes by college students?

andoatnp — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:25:09 -0800

What are examples of college students holding a vote of no confidence for their college president? I'm interested in either all students, or a representative body, such as the student government, holding a vote or poll about a college president/chancellor/etc. I'm aware of the vote of no confidence by the Student Government Association at St. Louis University against their president.

What other schools have done something like this? Put broadly, do college/university students have any kind of history of weighing in on their school's leadership?

I am not interested in examples where it was the faculty who held the vote of no confidence.

I'm fixing a poll where my campaign wins and stops my base from wandering.

fishmasta — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 17:05:35 -0800

What's the difference between internal and public polls? Throughout the election season I keep hearing about the internal polls campaigns do and how they can differ from all the public polls that get reported. What is the real difference between the two? I've often heard that they can skew to the benefit of whoever commissioned the poll, but wouldn't the campaigns have an interest in getting the most accurate polling possible? Are they using different sampling methods or asking different questions? What's the distinction?

HTML Job Search

kreestar — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:10:35 -0800

Can I use a form/survey on an HTML page to enter data and have the entered code append to the end of a URL that, apart from the variable suffix, remains constant? Going to do my best to explain this with zilch technical vocabulary:

Would like users to be able to search for "jobs logged" using a unique Job ID (but have no control on the site on which houses the job info).

The jobs are filed consistently as follows:
http://blahblahblah/subfolder/LoggedJobs.aspx?ID=1234
http://blahblahblah/subfolder/LoggedJobs.aspx?ID=4567

So, will a input field be able to take whatever text is entered and open the URL with the inputted job number stuck to the end of it? Is there a better option that'll get the same result of having an easy interface to enter a code and be displayed a page relevant to that code?

Website for a simple two-stage poll/survey?

MeatyBean — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:56:46 -0800

Website for a simple two-stage poll/survey? I'm looking for a website or a way to host a simple web poll/survey. I need it to be two stages so that the response to the first question determines the available answer choices for the second question. An example would be "In what state did you graduate with your degree?" with a choice for each of the 50 states of America for the first question, the second question would be a list of universities in that state. If someone were to respond to the first prompt with "New York", they would be presented with universities found in the state of New York for the second prompt which would ask "From which university?"

Is there not a free website where I can create this kind of two-stage question? I don't need in-depth statistical analysis or any fluff and I don't have a web host or background in PHP/HTML/etc. Your help is welcomed and appreciated!

Lunchtime Poll

hermitosis — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:21:00 -0800

I want to be able to poll audience members via text message during a live event. What programs/apps/websites should I check out? Ideally, this is how it would work -- I ask the audience to vote between choice A and choice B by sending a text message to a provided phone number. Their votes are sorted or tabulated or whatever, preferably resulting in some sort of infographic -- a bar graph for example.

The goal is to avoid needing an actual person on hand to receive and tabulate the votes as they come in.

Anyhow, does such a tool exist?

Best way to create a photo poll on Wordpress?

iamkimiam — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 05:46:34 -0800

What's the easiest way to create a post/poll on a Wordpress.com hosted blog that will allow site visitors to vote on their favorite from ~15 photos? Photos are currently on Flickr (and my laptop). This is a Wordpress.com blog, without the custom CSS upgrade. I need to find a free way to post this by tonight...even if it means just providing a click-thru post to some other site that will allow 'voting' on fave pics. If I can feature the photos and poll on/in Wordpress (that anybody can access/participate in), great!

I thought this was going to be easier than it is turning out to be. Thanks for your help; I'm stumped.

Is this poll valid?

rleamon — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:06:34 -0800

Is this poll bogus? A conservative friend has sent me a link to this poll, conducted by Zogby International (which appears reputable), that gives low scores on "economic enlightenment" to women, the less-wealthy, infrequent Wal-Mart shoppers, non-Nascar fans, the unmarried, union members, Obama voters, etc., and doesn't correlate it with college attendance. The poll seems very slanted and bizarre to me but I don't know enough about polling to know if I'm right or not. Can anyone help? The following paragraph really stood out, for instance:

We think it is reasonable to maintain that if a respondent disagrees with the statement “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable,” the respondent betrays a lack of economic enlightenment. Challengers might say something like: “Well, not every restriction on housing development makes housing less affordable,” but such a challenger would be tendentious and churlish. Unless a statement in a questionnaire explicitly makes it a matter of 100%, by using “every,” “all,” “always,” “none,” or “never,” it is natural to understand the statement as a by-and-large statement about overall consequences. Do restrictions on housing development, by and large, make housing less affordable? Yes they do. Does free trade lead, overall, to greater unemployment? No, it does not. For someone to say the contrary is economically unenlightened.

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%.