issue framing
Maybe the results of the election were affected by the way the question was worded on the ballot? That's a likely reason for the results being so ambiguous...
It's remarkably hard to write questions well. Often, even when you think you have it right, the respondents don't understand it the way you thought they would. I've a fuzzy memory of a poll in the US in which over half of respondents said they did not believe in God, and over half said they believed Jesus Christ is the living Son of God. Since it's hard to imagine a significant fraction of respondents believe JC to be the living Son of a God that they don't believe exists, it seems these questions were not understood by respondents the way they were to the authors of the questions.
Even if the questions were worded well, it's still impossible to devise a fair way of aggregating the voters' rankings of three or more options. (Arrow's impossibility theorem)
I've heard this claim before. From what I understand of the point, the meaning behind it has two distinct parts: one to do with the information content of poll results, the other to do with the vagueness of the concept of fairness. Those two parts should really be kept separate. The most useful question to ask about a poll like this is, what does this tell us about respondents' thinking?
Very, very interesting!! It's funny to me, how, the deeper you get into Economics, the closer it starts to become metaphysical/spiritual/religious-like in design!
Three guys die and go to Heaven, where they're greeted by Albert Einstein. Einstein asks the first guy, "What's your IQ?" The guy answers, "170." "Wonderful!", says Einstein, "We can spend eternity discussing theoretical physics!" He asks the second, "What's your IQ?" The second guy answers, "270." "Wonderful! We can spend eternity discussing economic theory!" He asks the third, "What's your IQ?" The third guy answers, "70." Einstein shakes his hand warmly. "Glad to meet you! What stocks do you like?"