VITAMEDIAS
Chain e-mail fires up ABC Online poll: A chain e-mail initiated yesterday sparked an overwhelming response to an ABC online poll about Australian involvement in a possible war against Iraq.
The brief message contained a link to the poll, which asked the simple question: "Should Australia take part in a war against Iraq?"
By yesterday afternoon, 57,000 votes had been registered, with 90 percent of respondents answering "no".
But Anita Pugliese, a senior research director with polling giant Gallup, says that although the number of respondents is nothing short of massive, the result isn’t necessarily representative of the views of the whole community, or even the online community.
"We need to be cautious when looking at Web polls. Even with large samples they may not be representative of the wider population," she said.