Trump proposal to ban Muslims from US relies on debunked poll from pro-Israel think tank

[starroute]

11. If you don't like Mondoweiss, have some Echidne

http://www.echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2015/12/first-ban-all-muslims-donald-trump.html

Here is the summary of the survey, and here are the cross-tabulations with some abbreviated forms of the questions it used. I went through everything so that you don't have to, but, really, always verify.

When someone presents a poll or a survey which is supposed to reflect the average opinions of some wider group the first thing you should ask if it actually represents those opinions. This particular survey fails to pass that test. The reason is simple: It was an Internet convenience survey, not a survey which made an effort to get a representative sample of all American Muslims into the study.

We don't know if the people who self-selected into the survey are roughly the same in their opinions as American Muslims, on average. We don't even know if the respondents are Muslims! I am not saying that they aren't. Simply that we have no way of knowing, and neither do we have any way to tell how representative the views in the survey are of all Muslims in this country.