Saturday, September 17, 2005
getting local voices heard
m2powered communications solutions will soon be unveiling a new project: local public opinion polling.
I try and keep track of the latest poll results that are published by the major polling outfits like SurveyUSA, Gallup and Ipsos. Polling Report is a great clearinghouse for these and many more national polls.
The problem as I see it is that these are all national polls that rarely, if ever, accurately reflect the opinions of people in Arizona Congressional Districts 7 and 8.
So I intend to use the resources at my disposal, mainly this website for starters, to begin documenting local opinions. I will contract with SurveyMonkey.com, a great site that does an excellent job with online data collection.
I'm not just looking for progressive viewpoints either. I really am genuinely interested in knowing what everyone in southern Arizona thinks about the issues and about the job our elected officials are doing in Phoenix and D.C.
Now this plan isn't without flaws, of course. The margins of error will be huge for the first few rounds because we won't yet have a very large representative sample. But eventually I hope to have a sizeable solid, diverse base of southern Arizonans who want to make sure their voices are heard. And the methodology of conducting an online poll will of course leave some people out whose voices also still deserve to be heard.
But all that aside, there are perks to participating. The most immediate benefit? Poll participants will have free password-protected access to the most recent poll results. Local businesses, advocacy groups and candidates may eventually pay to have specific questions included in the polls, but I won't allow push-polling.
As the cliche goes, knowledge is power. And I hope that this new initiative will give us all a little more knowledge about our neighbors, which in turn will increase our citizen power subtantially.
Stay tuned...
I try and keep track of the latest poll results that are published by the major polling outfits like SurveyUSA, Gallup and Ipsos. Polling Report is a great clearinghouse for these and many more national polls.
The problem as I see it is that these are all national polls that rarely, if ever, accurately reflect the opinions of people in Arizona Congressional Districts 7 and 8.
So I intend to use the resources at my disposal, mainly this website for starters, to begin documenting local opinions. I will contract with SurveyMonkey.com, a great site that does an excellent job with online data collection.
I'm not just looking for progressive viewpoints either. I really am genuinely interested in knowing what everyone in southern Arizona thinks about the issues and about the job our elected officials are doing in Phoenix and D.C.
Now this plan isn't without flaws, of course. The margins of error will be huge for the first few rounds because we won't yet have a very large representative sample. But eventually I hope to have a sizeable solid, diverse base of southern Arizonans who want to make sure their voices are heard. And the methodology of conducting an online poll will of course leave some people out whose voices also still deserve to be heard.
But all that aside, there are perks to participating. The most immediate benefit? Poll participants will have free password-protected access to the most recent poll results. Local businesses, advocacy groups and candidates may eventually pay to have specific questions included in the polls, but I won't allow push-polling.
As the cliche goes, knowledge is power. And I hope that this new initiative will give us all a little more knowledge about our neighbors, which in turn will increase our citizen power subtantially.
Stay tuned...
