Poll: Did you know that HN allows you to make polls?
"How accurate are online polls?"<p><i>[M]ost online polls that use participants who volunteer to take part do not have a proven record of accuracy. There are at least two reasons for this. One is that not everyone in the U.S. uses the internet, and those who do not are demographically different from the rest of the public. Another reason is that people who volunteer for polls may be different from other people in ways that could make the poll unrepresentative. At worst, online polls can be seriously biased if people who hold a particular point of view are more motivated to participate than those with a different point of view.</i><p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/2010/12/29/how-accurate-are-online-polls/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pewresearch.org/2010/12/29/how-accurate-are-onli...</a><p>Rather than serve as accurate assessments of public opinion or beliefs, online polls at best surface sentiments and potential areas of interest.  Some are mere amusements.  Many serve a darker purpose of advocating for a specific cause or ideology (a "push poll" <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll</a>), fishing for either insights on how audiences might be manipulated through advertising or propaganda, or outright soliciting personal information that is of use in hacking into accounts by guessing passwords or so-called "security questions".