P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Surveys give us a way of finding out what people across the country are thinking.

We look at all the polls, not just the Gallup Poll. So, it's kind of like if you have, you know, four out of five doctors agree that reducing cholesterol reduces your risk of a heart attack, Gallup is like the fifth doctor.

You cannot be driven by the polls. The polls change all the time; they're easily manipulated by whoever wants to ask those poll questions; they go up; they go down.

I'm a believer in the polls, by the way. Rarely do you see a poll that's very far off.

Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.

If you believe these polls, you're making a mistake.

You can't depend on polls.

For 'Power of 10,' you can look at the methodology at CBS.com, it's a company called Rasmussen Reports. We poll thousands and thousands of people for each question, a real cross section of the United States.

USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.

If you aren't taking a representative sample, you won't get a representative snapshot.

Polls are inaccurate in my opinion, based upon anecdotal evidence, based upon people that I know.

Polls are only good for dogs.

We don't base our opinions on the Gallup Poll.

I don't put a lot of stock into polls.

Polling is an art as well as a science, and the art of crafting good questions is still vital.

I have never had an interest in opinion polls. They are merely an indicator, that's all.

I don't put too much stock in polls.

I know that a lot of people love to say that polls are wrong or don't matter, and from time to time they are - it depends on who they are polling.

When I started in the nineties, a sample size was a 4 and a 6.

The media uses polls to create news stories. I think polls are just an extension of the editorial page, an excuse to get them on the front page. You can ask any question you want, get any answer you want, and then run around with that as a news story.

I'm a pollster by trade, so I'm into things that are actually quantifiable.

I certify and declare that the Account of the Population of the District for which I am Enumerator, contained in this Book, has been truly and faithfully taken by me, and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the same is correct

… information that has come in has not commenced an investigation …. I never made a lead from rhetoric that came from a Demographics report, and I'm here since 2006

Our polling methodology has gotten outdated, and, in fact, it's not really telling us what it needs to be telling us.

If you don't have material, you don't have an experiment.