I've recently been blocked by the owners/founders of two of #cdnpoli's big polling companies. This exposes the flaw that exists under most polling: the insertion of personal biases into polling. This flaw is so big, it discredits polling AND #cdnmedia reporting thereof.
#bcpoli

My analysis of this draws on my dietetic training. The art of asking non-leading questions is integral to providing good dietetic advice. If you don't know what your patients are actually eating, you can't help them achieve optimal health. It's necessary here to differentiate 2/n

...nutritional from dietetic advice. Nutritional advice is premised on achieving or maintaining health w/in parameters of normal physiology. Dietetics is about adjusting diet when some physiological changes alter capacity to eat, or capacity to absorb/process food. So, w illness.

When someone is ill - let's say they have diabetes, or Crohn's Disease - their well-being depends on them being able to make & keep to the suggested dietary adjustments. But eating is an emotional, behavioural act, & people's decisions about what they eat aren't programmable. 4/n

To suggest a dietary plan that a patient will stick to, a dietitian has to get a good idea first of what food choices the person is making now. In order to hear about the bucket of cookie dough ice cream being eaten each evening, the questions asked have to be free of judgment.

That is to say, the question has to be designed without a built-in presumption that eating cookie-dough ice cream is a bad thing. To do that, you have to realize that, it really might not be, for the physiological conditions the person has been living with till now. 6/n

So, let's return to political polling. My little contretemps with Angus Reid began with this tweet that he posted:

Now, this tweet caught my attention NOT because of the opinion expressed, however myopic & self-indulgent it is, but because it expresses contempt for Canadians who hold the views he derides.
What I know is that, having derision & contempt PRECLUDE asking truly open questions.8/n

Polling is important b/c people don't vote based only on their own political views. They vote by placing themselves in what they believe the mix of opinions in the public realm is. Some people are only comfortable doing what everyone else is doing.

Other people like to support the underdog; still others prefer to buck the system altogether & they vote what they see as counter-culture. What polls report, then, affects how people place themselves socially, regardless of what policies are being supported or discounted.
10/n

For example, I live in a riding that votes NDP so reliably, you could run an old shoe in this riding under the NDP banner, and it would win. This is not b/c everyone in the riding loves NDP policies. In fact, I don't think most NDP voters KNOW NDP policy. They vote to BELONG.

So, what the pollsters report about the trends in the riding tells people who the cool kids are. BTW, I grew up in a riding that voted Socred et al as reliably as my present riding votes NDP. Interestingly, those ridings have changed more than the left wing exemplars.
12/n

US polling has been exposed, these last years, as a "science" that is incapable of accuracy. This is b/c the pollsters increasingly belong to the "creative class," i.e., the progressive left, which suffers from such powerful self-regard that it cannot ask a truly open question.

Again, the lesson from my history is that you will not hear from people any information for which you have or feel contempt. You need not express that contempt. It will be inherent in your design & selection of questions.
Therefore, what your poll reports will be misleading.
14/n

It must have been about the same time he blocked me that Angus Reid posted this tweet:

The tweet is amusing for its naiveté: Twitter doesn't work this way. You don't just "share" your views w/o getting exposed to others' views back. Even your sycophantic followers will eventually raise just a little dust, b/c THEY TOO ARE ON TWITTER TO SHARE THEIR THOUGHTS.
16/n

This really is the big news as to how little a pollster understands the people he purports to be expert at polling: he thinks there is a population on Twitter that only wants to hear his views.
If he keeps blocking anyone who disagrees, he'll keep thinking this too.

Meanwhile, his account will be an echo chamber of bots; not the environment a pollster should WANT to be operating in.
That he describes me inaccurately is of secondary importance; and even if it were accurate, I don't matter to the accuracy of his polls.
18/n

What's so intolerable is the categorization of all views AND PEOPLE he groups under the umbrella terms "stupid, ill informed, racist, ignorant, intolerant, crazy."
It seems his polls won't be offering any people who he thus categorizes an opportunity to explain their reasoning.

And the pt to which he renders himself blind by blocking & "othering" is to learn that everyone has reasons. Those reasons are often based in their experience. Let's go straight to where angels fear to tread w an eg: a gay couple whose muslim bldg mgr sought to evict them.
20/n

Like it or not, as society changes, different kinds of conflicts emerge. B/c we don't have #a2j, the courts no longer offer an accessible dispute resolution mechanism, & people are more vested in politics for more reasons. Open-minded polling could help keep politics civil.

I'm going to pause for a while here; may continue later.