It is said that numbers do not lie, but statistics can be utilized to do just that. In a poll done by AM New York last week, it revealed that 77 percent of New Yorkers wish to maintain Stop and Frisk. The controversial police tactic that was ruled unconstitutional in federal court apparently has wide spread support by crime conscious city residents. However, it is a fair question to ask which New Yorkers were polled on this matter.
From the piece in AMNY, there was talk of a “silent majority” that would be sacrificed should stop and frisk not be preserved. With this kind of coded language, and the practice being very much under scrutiny, it is important to broaden the discussion. Considering that stop and frisk is such a big issue in this year’s mayoral election, it would not be surprising that this poll come under the microscope.
To New Yorkers reading this, were your thoughts represented in this poll?
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No one polled me, or anyone I know. And you’re right – very often, statistics lie. If you only poll the people you know are going to give you the answer you want, how honest is that poll?
The last time I checked the city has been doing fine without “Stop & Frisk” for many years prior to the Bloomberg administration. The poll is obviously skewed. This reminds me of that study they did of traffic stops in NJ they did several years back that was commissioned by the Feds. They threw out the study because about one-third of the people identified in the study had an unknown race. If you’re doing a study to determine if a certain racial group is committing more reckless driving and you throw out one-third of the study sample you’re introducing selection bias into the data set. However the NJ State troopers wanted the study data published because they felt it vindicated their unfair targeting of Blacks in traffic stops. Unfortunately they had a poor understanding of statistics to understand why the data was not generalizable to the population at large, or in layman’s terms: worthless.
If this “poll” was conducted the way I suspect it was, it’s the equivalent of citizens who live on the East side thinking citizens on the West side should pay higher taxes. Why not? It won’t affect them, in the same way “stop and frisk” doesn’t affect those who would keep it. A judge ruled it unconstitutional in the manner it was being implemented…so why are we polling on this anyway? To bolster Bloomberg’s appeal?
Great point Brew.
In general selectively nitpicking polls that don’t say what one wants to hear is a bad idea (A certain M. Romney can say a thing or two about that) but FWIW Quinnipiac has conducted polls on this with similar results:
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/new-york-city/release-detail?ReleaseID=1967
There’s been a shift in favor of profiling recently, for example compare their own poll from a month back:
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/new-york-city/release-detail?ReleaseID=1960
This is one of the best respected polling agencies around:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinnipiac_University_Polling_Institute
Prasad, it is not about nitpicking a poll. Its about questioning who was sampled in the poll. You say, nitpicking, I say analysis. Are polls things set in stone that are not supposed to be questioned?