Who really cares if the President's approval ratings go up or down?

The world has gone mad about approval ratings. Prime Ministers, Presidents, Princes, Town Mayors, NRL and AFL coaches——everyone is getting rated except the people taking polls and the people publishing them.

"O-o-o-o-o-o-h-h! President Obama's approval ratings are down. Flames, earthquakes, agues and boils will break out and the world will end at midnight."

How it started
Feedback forms and polls became a trend that started when suggestion boxes lay empty for years and photocopiers became ubiquitous and phones got buttons. Today you wouldn't bother with feedback forms if you had to get your "seccatry" to cut a wax Gestetner stencil and run the paper through a stinky inky noisy printer. Phone pollsters wouldn't ring you if they had to dial your number using the circular clickety clack reverse-wind dial.

Who's counting?
People have come to believe feedback is the ‘"correct" thing to do. It's the sort of exercise driven by try-hard training managers because they read about it in a magazine or by bean counters who like doing cost analyses. ‘You have to measure your outcomes,' they say. But how come no-one analyses the cost of doing the cost analysis?

Dopey
When I started speaking professionally it was the done thing to "elicit feedback" but I woke up pretty quickly that this was dopey. Research Statistics #101 taught me:

Belly-achers
10% of any audience will hate any presenter for any reason. So if there are 200 people in the audience there's 20 negative responses you can be guaranteed to get. These are usually the keenest to respond too. Taking a survey just tells you who your whiners are. Why would I want to know? Tell me you acted on it by sacking the mongrels and that would be news.

Poll Dancers
Another 10%—also keen to express their opinion—will respond negatively to a poll just because they were asked to take part in a poll and they think that's what is required in polls. I think it's called Polling Syndrome. There's another 20 negative responses you can guarantee. Any one of any of these is enough to quell one's desire to live.

Unpredictables
The middle 40% may or may not respond at all but if they do it will be with a mix of positive and negative responses, depending on a number of factors:
the wording of the questions,
> who is asking,
> how they normally respond to polls,
> their mood at the time of responding,
> how "intellectual" they want you to believe they are,
> whether they want to be noticed
> what they think you want to hear
> what they think you are too stupid to work out for yourself
> whether or not they like the pollster,
> the time of day
> whether or not they want your job and
> their level of annoyance or happiness at being asked.

Undependables
The last 40% will be a mixed bunch of ‘"happy enough" ranging to ‘"delighted" but still few of these will give you any response worth banking. The speaker could have appealed to them physically——I've had to adjust the ratings down many times because of this factor in my case——or might have smiled at them twice or let them have the last cookie at morning tea.

I saw a speaker's website blurb that read, "Over the past 15 years she has averaged 97% audience approval ratings." Yeah, right! Some silly people will say anything and expect other silly people to believe it.

So no doubt you'll have an opinion on this and you'll probably feel the need to share it with me, —for my own good, of course. Yes I know. You have to give me a little bit of feedback.
Ahhh, dear!
Go on then.
I'll just lie back and think of England.