voodoo poll
n.— «“Voodoo polls” is a term coined by Sir Bob Worcester to refer to phone-in, click-on or “press-the-red-button” polls, the sort of thing you see on Sky News, the AOL homepage or in the tabloid press. These polls have no statistical validity whatsover, they do not attempt to be representative of the population, they are entirely self-selecting and they are spectacularly easy to fix by getting partisan supporters to repeatedly ring them. No one should mistake them for a worthwhile indication of public opinion.» —“Voodoo Polling Corner” by Anthony Wells UK Polling Report Feb. 24, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
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