Not really. Research actually suggests that it would increase the percentage of people voting Republican. People sometimes use polls as voting cues.....meaning they use public opinion as a barometer to judge the quality of candidates. There's also other research that suggests that non-voters tend to just follow polling trends.....meaning that if non-voters actually voted, they would just increase the victory margins of the election winners.

In what way do you mean?

Gödel (essentially) produced a proof that not all things that are true can be proven using a formal logic system; I don't want to go into detail at the moment but you can look up his incompleteness theorems if you're interested. Statistics as a field of study (basically) fills the gap by providing evidence that something may be true but there are rules and methodologies that have to be followed to prevent the bias of the researcher being translated into whatever you're studying.

In some fields of study these rules are strictly followed and the academic community enforces these rules. If you're doing medical research (for example) all studies have well defined null hypothesis, are double blind, and involve massive sample sizes; and papers will be rejected based on analysis of their methodology alone.

The social sciences don't come close to the rigidity that is required from a real science ...

But in the context of what we're talking about, we're not dealing with the social sciences we're dealing with public opinion polling. These polling firms are not unbiased, they produce opinion polls that provide the results people are paying them to. If you have the money Gallup will phone every household in the United States and ask them "As you may no, yesterday President Obama proposed a set of new laws to dramatically reduce the personal freedoms of citizens of the United States. From what you know or have read about this, would you want your representative in Congress to vote for or against these proposed new laws?"

Public opinion polls do not want to measure the opinion of people, they're used by people in an attempt to create public opinion; either through push polls or to be spread through the media. If they wanted an honest view of public opinion they would have phrased the question in as specific and neutral of a way as possible; and you would have had a question like "Legislation has been proposed to ban assault rifles and high capacity magazines, where high capacity magazine is defined to be a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds, do you support these initiatives?" ... By directly referencing a particular very-high profile and popular politician while including the phrased "laws designed to reduce gun violence" without including any specifics on what they were attempting to do the question they asked was specifically designed to get a positive response.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/159569/americans-stricter-gun-laws-oppose-bans.aspx

Gallup has been asking neutral questions about gun control for years (if you scroll down, they actually ask the questions with similar wording to what you used). They are just trying to measure public opinion towards Obama's plan, which is much more than just a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. Now, could it be more specific? Maybe, but its a bit difficult to include 23 points in the question. People would just tune out, and you wouldn't get enough responses. Truthfully, if you look at the results across different questions, they are quite comparable.

Edit: I also wouldn't call Obama popular.....polarizing, yes.

Dees strikes again with his new political collage. As usual brilliant and right to the point work :D

The graph represents 52% - 59%? lol. What a joke. What's the point of even having the graph, if not to deceive people?

what graph? the one pictured above shows peple against banning semi automatic weapons

The one about stricter gun laws, the blue bar graph.  It's a silly graph. 

I do have to say though, that I think in a way these polls are sort of playing on people's fears.  They were all taken in the wake of the Newton massacre, so it's nearly all emotional reactions and extreme overreactions.  Not sure if that's wise.  Since when do tragedies make good laws?  "We're going to assuage your fears by passing this new law that won't make any difference, but it will make it look like we're doing something! Rah!"  "Look how busy we are in D.C. passing these laws to make you safer!"

I find it kind of offensive, to be honest.

forget about that, aparrently they are writing legislation, and policy from the opinions of 10 years olds who wrote letters to Obama.