I will wager the people they polled had no clue where the phrase came from and just guessed from a proffered menu of responses.

Of the social and cultural problems we face, the widespread inability of people to recognize bits and pieces of Marx is not a priority. Time spent learning European intellectual history is time not spent on learning other things of value. It is utile to drill a broad range of people on the fundamentals of American history, geography, and civics, preferably in elementary school. Beyond that, put your effort into teaching youths who are receptive and interested.

Or is it a poll conducted according to normal sampling methodology, using the Internet as the medium?

There is a colossal difference between the two. If somebody posts a poll and anyone can just go answer it, it’s not remotely a valid poll. If a polling company contacts individuals based on sampling methodology and controls for the relatively small population differences in Internet connectivity vs. telephone usage, and has then use an Internet connection and a browser rather than a telephone to respond, it’s no different from a scientifically conducted phone survey.

Cell phone numbers, however, are not easy to obtain (wireless providers don’t sell these lists) and for polling in a particular geography cell phones are useless because cell phone numbers aren’t tied to specific geography the same way landline numbers are. (People can maintain the same cell phone number and move halfway across the country).

The link below discusses some of these issues.

http://www.aapor.org/Do_Cell_Phones_Affect_Survey_Research_/2438.htm

That being said, I have no idea of the poll referenced in the post has any merit whatsoever.

An uncomfortably large percentage of everyone, in every place and time, knows very little about history and geography. (Or math, or chemistry…) The young tend to know less, as adults do stumble across real information over the years, driven home into memory by an experience that actually meant something to them, such as a foreign national marrying in, or deployment, or discovering an ancestor’s connection to an important event.

It may be distressing, but it is hardly alarming, as it is universal. Most of us are intelligent in only those things which offer some visible advantage to us.

So I assume from your hot, out-of-left-field defense of online polling, that you are in fact an online pollster. Am I right?

Just look at Europe, where the citizens are all better educated than ours, and their countries are all militarily weak and economically dependent on us.

Or otoh, look at China, which is rising to the status of super power and is practically bathing in ignorance.

I think those embarrassing polls are just one more reason to hold our heads high.

But over 60% of quantitative survey research conducted in the United States is conducted online (15 years ago about 60% was conducted over the phone).

This includes almost all package testing, concept testing, customer satisfaction and advertising awareness research. Polling is a different animal, but there are many ways to do this in a representative manner and in addition data for polling is always (and I mean always) weighted using a variety of statistical measures.

So you presume wrong. Don’t assume that the pop up window asking you to answer a survey on a random website or the invitation on your receipt at a retail outlet or restaurant is what online research is all about.