The Volokh Conspiracy - Arizona Capitol Times "Poll" About School Choice:

Are private school voucher programs a valid use of tax money?

The results right now: 94% for, 6% against. Of course, this means precisely one thing -- those people who learned of the poll and who decided to participate broke down 94%-6%. It means nothing about the views of Arizonans generally, of Americans generally, or of readers of the Arizona Capitol Times generally.

Naturally, a post such as this one may skew the results still further, if it draws more people to participate in the "poll," and if (as is highly likely) the views of our readers who choose to participate are unrepresentative of whatever other group one might be trying to measure. But the results were unrepresentative before this post, and would have been skewed even if no blog had ever linked to the poll. I hope that readers of the Arizona Capitol Times realize the poll results are meaningless, in which case the newspaper's decision to run the poll would be merely frivolous; my fear is that some readers won't realize it, in which case the newspaper's decision would be downright misleading. (True, judging by the current poll results, it would mislead people in the direction I favor, but that's hardly an adequate justification.)

	[Eugene Volokh, February 26, 2007 at 1:10pm] Trackbacks Arizona Capitol Times "Poll" About School Choice: The Arizona Capitol Times asks, Are private school voucher programs a valid use of tax money? The results right now: 94% for, 6% against. Of course, this means precisely one thing -- those people who learned of the poll and who decided to participate broke down 94%-6%. It means nothing about the views of Arizonans generally, of Americans generally, or of readers of the Arizona Capitol Times generally. Naturally, a post such as this one may skew the results still further, if it draws more people to participate in the "poll," and if (as is highly likely) the views of our readers who choose to participate are unrepresentative of whatever other group one might be trying to measure. But the results were unrepresentative before this post, and would have been skewed even if no blog had ever linked to the poll. I hope that readers of the Arizona Capitol Times realize the poll results are meaningless, in which case the newspaper's decision to run the poll would be merely frivolous; my fear is that some readers won't realize it, in which case the newspaper's decision would be downright misleading. (True, judging by the current poll results, it would mislead people in the direction I favor, but that's hardly an adequate justification.)