A quick note on some important polling that’s going on in town this week that are begging for input from the BloggingBelmont readership. The first is a residential parking survey that’s being conducted by the town to gauge residents feelings about the current parking regulations in town. This survey is important (you may have received a robo call regarding it on Friday) and will be used to shape street parking bylaws and policies in coming years. So if you’ve got an opinion about onstreet parking, overnight parking, or how many cars your neighbors can have in their driveway, click on the link abouve and please weigh in. Or, visit the town’s Web site: http://www.town.belmont.ma.us/Home/I01476F4D.
The other item worth your attention is a poll that’s being conducted by the Belmont Citizen Herald to solicit input on possible Prop 2 1/2 overrides to patch the hole in the town’s operational budget. As often happens with these polls (here as elsewhere) the results tend to reflect the opinions of the most strident subscribers. Currently, the poll is showing a slight majority (55%) against any override. Votes for overrides of various sizes makes up the rest.
The BCH makes clear that they’re for fun and unscientific. The problem is that the results of these polls often end up as news stories online (and in print?) and those tend to shape opinions and conversation within town. So if a SurveyMonkey poll of 100 readers turns out lopsided against any override, and a news story gets written to that effect, the impression in town is that an override is doomed, even while only a tiny fraction of voters took part. Take 30 seconds and tell the BCH how you feel about the town’s need for an operational override!
Thanks for including this info!
Hey Paul,
The briefs put together on poll results are almost always on the Comment page or the jump page to the Comment page, which are the opinion and editorial pages of the newspaper. I think once or twice I've put them on a color page so I could see how the chart looked printed in color. I put them on the Comment pages so that people know that they aren't “news” stories but are an overview of the poll results, which is most surely opinion.
That said, people should vote online if they are interested in the subject matter. With more than 150 votes in at this point, I'm not at all surprised that the results are divided just about down the middle [assuming 52 percent No; 49 percent an override of some size].
Our online polls are totally unscientific and produced just for fun, to test a sample of the public's opinion. That said, on overrides, the polls have been a pretty good testing of that sample. Our last poll on the roads override was close to the actual results whereas, if I recall correctly, your poll on the same subject was off by quite a bit …
Which, of course, just goes to show you that the poll that only matters is the one on Election Day.
Tony
Hey Tony. 52/48(?) is an improvement — it was 55/45 when I checked last time. Yeah — I thought I was pretty clear that BCH isn't making any claims of statistical accuracy. However, the polls do shape public perceptions. Most folks who read them aren't considering the sample size, readership or wording of the questions — they look at the results. Yeah, my roads poll was WAY off.
I was just tickling you. I thought the way you did the survey was pretty cool. I hope to finally have the time to put an extensive reader survey together as kind of a follow up to the advisory committee structure. It's always good to dabble in these technologies.
So the results are in and 51% say no, and 48% say yes at varying degrees- this is amazing- this means that there is hope for help in my mind. When I went to the public forum on the budget at Chenery a couple of weeks ago I was also heartened. It felt like people understand that this is important for everyone. This survey, as has been mentioned before, usually leans very conservative- so to come this close to a split is significant. Does anyone know how it works if they give choices as they did in the survey?- if the yes votes split up to the varying degrees, but more people vote for some sort of override, does that mean it passes, or does the no vote win even if it isn't the majority?
So the results are in and 51% say no, and 48% say yes at varying degrees- this is amazing- this means that there is hope for help in my mind. When I went to the public forum on the budget at Chenery a couple of weeks ago I was also heartened. It felt like people understand that this is important for everyone. This survey, as has been mentioned before, usually leans very conservative- so to come this close to a split is significant. Does anyone know how it works if they give choices as they did in the survey?- if the yes votes split up to the varying degrees, but more people vote for some sort of override, does that mean it passes, or does the no vote win even if it isn't the majority?