Climate Change Poll?

HarveyH55 wrote:
While reading the daily news online, I clicked on this story:

https://www.wftv.com/news/national-news/ap-top-news/apnorc-poll-trump-gets-some-of-his-worst-grades-on-climate/985517348

The results seemed a little exaggerated, even for an AP story. Of course, the story never includes the questions asked, or how the people surveyed were selected. I wasn't familiar with NORC, so checked it out, and found the AP poll, with the questions:

http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Pages/The-Politics-of-Climate-Change.aspx

I was still further skeptical of the results, and how the participants are selected, and came across this:

https://amerispeak.norc.org/about-amerispeak/Pages/Panel-Design.aspx

Best I can figure, the people surveyed signup to participate, are rewarded for participation, basically semi-employed. I didn't look into the rewards program, or who they except/reject, I do understand, that if they mail out 1,000 surveys, make 1,000 phone calls, a good portion will go unanswered (I general don't participate). The main problem I see, is that they likely keep track of the participants, and rank them by how likely/quickly, they fill out the surveys. It's also possible that they keep a database of questions asked/response for each participation, since such data would have a cash value for other research and marketing. Pretty much everyone is data mining these days, big business. There is always some potential for abuse, the random selection, might not be entirely random. They openly discuss weighting in the selection process, to insure the hard to reach portion of the population are included. They didn't really go into detail of what information they used, but didn't directly indicate it was purely postal address. I'd imagine they dip into the database, and use income, occupation, education, marriage status, family size, and pretty much anything else, in the 'random' selection process. There is some bias from the start, since who actually signs up for surveys, and what rewards motivate them to participate. What would stop any group, from encouraging thousands of like-mind individual for signing up? Even if the service is completely legitimate, bias could easily be introduce from outside. People who pay for surveys, generally have a need or expectation of the results, and carefully craft the question, in hopes of getting the expected results.

Regardless of my speculations and suspicions, the sample, isn't actually random. The participants all agreed to participate in advance, and will fill out the surveys, whether truthfully, or just to get it done, to keep their membership in good standing, and earn rewards.