Student blog post: Headline: Giant meteor hitting earth preferred by 1 in 4 millennials over Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton presidency

Feed URL: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/criticalthinking/2017/03/28/student-blog-post-headline-giant-meteor-hitting-earth-preferred-by-1-in-4-millennials-over-donald-trump-or-hillary-clinton-presidency/feed/?withoutcomments=1

The story behind this headline is that when given the choice between either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton becoming president, more young Americans wanted a giant meteor to strike Earth on 8th November. The method used to collect this data was a poll conducted by UMass Lowell’s Centre of Public Opinion and Odyssey Millenials (UML). When exploring UML’s methods further I found that the poll asked millennials about their attitudes and opinions on the election and serious issues such as race, immigration etc. which was obtained through telephone interviews with a sample of 1,026 adults in New Hampshire. The method of a poll through telephone interviews and the sample size was appropriate, however it was all based in one area which may create unrepresentative data of the whole of American millennials. In the Guardian article, the person who ran the study stated that they obviously didn’t think that these results were serious, but the fact that one in four young people picked ‘Giant Meteor’ shows something about the political disaffection the American youth are feeling. Therefore, this story’s purpose is deeper than the headline itself and some people may take the headline seriously, making it a little misleading.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/giant-meteor-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-millennials-us-election-2016-a7368476.html

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