voodoo poll
n.— «The telephone has made opinion polling vastly easier and faster. It has encouraged not only the carefully structured poll, which confronts a large random sample with a well-designed question, but what Robert Worcester, head of MORI, Britain’s largest polling firm, calls the “voodoo poll,” whereby newspaper readers or television viewers are encouraged to telephone with their opinions on some burning issue of the day. Charging a premium rate for the call makes money, too.» —“Special—Democracy And Technology—Electioneering” Econmist (U.K.) June 17, 1995. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
In 1968, students at Cheyenne High School in Cheyenne, Wyoming, compiled a collection of their own slang, including the word Clyde, used to refer to one’s head, as in Use your Clyde! This is part of a complete episode.
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