elchase

The best lines here are "Self-selecting polls only report the results of people who cared one way or another to either call a particular number, reply by email or are willing to be interviewed in person in a public place (think of mall surveys). The results cannot be generalized beyond those who choose to answer." and "The results of random samples can be applied to a larger group because every person in the study group had an equal opportunity to be selected."

How appropriate to the present case were we have a small group conducting their own self-selecting polls and trying to generalize the results across the entire population, while at the same time trying to discredit a large scale broad based random poll properly conducted by a well known, legitimate, and unbiased polling expert, because those results do not suit their goals. Imagine them telling a legislator, "We polled ourselves and 60% of the GFBL crowd agrees that the SL should sunset, while the other 40% of us think the limits should just be raised."