Logical Reasoning

PT108 · S2 · Q3 Columnist: Polls can influence voters

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Columnist: Polls can influence voters' decisions, and they may distort the outcome of an election since their results are much less reliable than the public believes.

Conclusion

We should implement a ban on publishing polls during the week prior to an election.

Evidence

This ban would only minimally impair freedom of expression. Polls may distort the outcome of an election, since their results are less reliable than people think, and publishing them in the week before an election wouldn't give anyone who wanted to dispute the polls a chance to respond.

Evaluate

If we were gonna accept all those premises but argue we shouldn't have a ban on polling during the final week, what kind of stuff could we say?

- even minimal impairment of freedom of speech is intolerable - voters have a right to hear the last-minute polling, even if it's less reliable than they believe - people rarely dispute the polls' findings, or if they do, disputing the polls usually has no effect on voters' decisions

Goal

Hard to know what to anticipate here, so let's just look for a way to argue that we should still have polls published during the final week, or an answer that makes one of the author's pieces of evidence seem less relevant or compelling.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the columnist's argument?

Correct
Few people are influenced by
Why this is right
This has the effect of downplaying the significance of some of the author's evidence as well as helping us to argue the Anti-Conclusion. In the evidence, the author said that polls can influence voters' decisions and might distort the outcome of an election, but if, as this answer says, few people are influenced by last-minute polls, then we don't really need to worry much about last-minute polls changing how the voting would go down. (If you're being a stickler, "few" just means less than 50% and if even 10% of the electorate was influenced / convinced by last minute polling, that could easily swing the balance of a tight election. So this answer is pretty lame.) This answer, though, at least gives us something to say. We can say, "Yes even though polls can influence and polls can distort and last-minute polls don't leave time for rebuttals, we should still allow polls during the final week because few people are influenced by last-minute polls and so there's no compelling reason to abridge freedom of expression".
Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
61% picked this
The publication of poll results
Too Weak
This is just saying "if the race isn't close, then the influence of polling results is not going to decide the winner". Okay, but what about races that are close? Maybe those are more common and polling is liable to tip the scales and thus the author is right? This gives us a small way to argue "we should keep allowing last-minute polling, since it won't decide landslide elections", but that's a weak rejoinder.
9% picked this
The publication of poll results
Strengthens
This is reinforcing the potential influence on voters that voting results can have. This basically expresses the author's fear -- she's worried that a last minute-poll would unreliably say a certain candidate will win, lead to demotivating some voters, and thus distort the outcome of an election.
8% picked this
The publication of poll results
Strengthens, if anything
I can see considering this answer by thinking, "We should keep last-minute polling, because otherwise voters are getting the crucial information that certain candidates are swelling in popularity." But two things: - is it actually common sense to think that voters need to know that candidate has had a late gain in popularity? one would hope that voting behavior is based more on an assessment of a candidate's policies and temperament, than on their late-gained popularity. - are these candidates actually having late gains in popularity, or is the poll just making it seem like that's happening? We were told that these are much less reliable than the public thinks. This answer suggests that last-minute polling could give off the (potentially misleading) impression that a candidate is getting really popular, which could distort the outcome of an election, if people's voting choice depends in part on the popularity of candidates.
8% picked this
Countries in which such a
Out of Scope: better informed
Our author isn't proposing the ban because she thinks that the voters will be better informed, but because she thinks it minimizes the risk of them being misled by an unreliable poll result. Those aren't synonyms. "Not being misled by fake information about how popular each candidate is" is different from "knowing more about the issues surrounding this election".
14% picked this

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