Opinion Polls and the Sheep Mentality

Opinion Polls and the Sheep Mentality

How often do you see news stories beginning with ‘latest polls suggest…’, or ‘a new opinion poll reveals…’?

Understanding that much of the mainstream media output is just propaganda, is a good starting point.

Their purpose is to try and lead the masses into a particular way of thinking, always towards the outcome they are looking to impose.

If the public can be tricked into either voting for it, or otherwise supporting it, then the dictatorship remains disguised, and nobody suggests otherwise.

Herd mentality

How do opinion polls fit in with this? They rely on the ‘herd mentality’ – where the sheep, sorry, general public police themselves into a consensus. Most people don’t want to be different, and are happy to go ‘with the flow’ and follow any new trend, and share similar opinions, for fear of standing out and being different, or for simply worrying about what others might think of them.

Brexit is obviously a great eye-opener for this kind of trick.

A new poll has revealed that 76% of Britons would now vote to Remain if another referendum was held

That’s just a sample example I’ve made up – but I have seen similar already used for real.

How does it work? If you voted to Leave, and saw that news story, there is a chance you might start to doubt yourself, and start thinking that you may have been wrong to have voted the way you did. If 76% would now vote Remain, that’s just over three quarters of the electorate. Must be a good idea to Remain then…

And that’s the intended outcome, at least that’s what the Establishment want to happen.

The sheep mentality is that if everybody else is doing it, perhaps I should too.

But the flaw of course is in how exactly these polls are carried out.

Who are they asking?

How many people are they asking?

Interpretation

There are numerous companies that carry out surveys to gather this data, but I bet most people have never been directly asked for their opinion in any survey.

The other telling thing is how many people were surveyed in order to arrive at a result. Often it is only around a thousand people or less.

Remember those adverts on the TV for beauty products where they would claim “4 out of 5 women” preferred some beauty product? And then in the ‘small print’ at the bottom of the screen it would state “based on a survey of 230 women”?

That’s exactly what is happening here. A polling company surveys less than a thousand people, but the result is then expressed as an interpretation of the desire of the entire population*.

So im my earlier example, out of 1000 people surveyed, 760 people said they would vote to Remain. That statistic then becomes headline news: “76% of Britons would vote to Remain”

*the eligible electorate for that referendum was 46,501,241. So unless they have asked all 46,501,241 again it’s merely an assumption.

I am very sceptical of these polling companies, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they can even selectively choose the people they surveyed in order to skew the result in order to get a desired outcome.

A few years ago, I signed up on the YouGov website to join their Panel, believing that I would be regularly asked my opinion on the matters of the day. To my disappointment, after initially answering a number of questions to build up my ‘profile’, the only surveys I seemed to be ‘invited’ to take part in were bullshit marketing surveys. “How do you feel about the following brands” etc etc.

During that time, numerous news stories would appear based on the results of some YouGov poll, yet all I was being asked about was whether I would be proud to work for Virgin Media!

Spin

So for another example, lets ask ten racist old ladies at the bus stop if black people should be deported. Nine said yes, one said no.

Now, how can we spin that into a headline?

“RACIST BRITAIN SHOCK: 9 in 10 Britons would deport black people”

That’s obviously just an example, please don’t shut me down for ‘hate speech’!

So it is my opinion, that rather than opinion polls merely ‘reflecting the mood of the nation’, they are also being used by the Establishment through their friends in the media to actively ‘shift the mood of the nation’.

Want the sheep to vote Labour at the next election? Tell them that ‘polls show Tories narrowly ahead of Labour’. That’ll get the Labour voters down the polling booths if they think they’re going to lose to the Tories.

Want to put people off voting UKIP or Green? Produce a poll result that shows they’ve ‘gone down’. Better vote Tory then.

Want to put people off voting altogether? Produce a poll that has an awful party like the Tories with a huge lead. “What’s the point in voting, they’re going to win anyway…”

Opinion polls are just statistics. Statistics are just data. And data can be manipulated and reinterpreted to get whatever outcome you are looking for.

“20% of Britons are bigoted racists”

Sounds horrific? But then again the news that “80% of Britons are decent tolerant people” doesn’t really sell newspapers or generate clicks for ad-revenue does it?

Jedi Mind Trick

The Establishment and the media will use every trick at their disposal in order to ‘persuade’ the people into changing their minds, or even to accept the agenda being pushed. Strong-willed people will of course stand their ground, but sadly those that believe everything that pours out of their TV screen might look around and see what the rest of the herd is doing, and then do the same. And if someone in the herd is acting differently, get them to act the same too.

If you can’t or don’t want to be a shepherd, there’s nothing wrong with at least being the black sheep in the flock.

But please don’t ever let yourself get fooled like these guys…

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