They are putting out very different numbers right now. So which one do people think is the most accurate?
none as conservatives are less likely to talk about what they think (duh, the meaning of the word conservative) and libs have no issues w/ lying ansd saying they’re a conservative.
It shows what messages are doing well with the people, gives a general idea on how the campaign is going, allows candidate to see how certain policies are fairing, tell’s a candidate what states to go for and what to leave, tell’s them what they need to improve…
How are political polls conducted? I’m asking because my current understanding is that they are conducted by groups that call land line phones of potential voters. The reason I’m curious is I can’t think of a single person I know under the age of about 30 who even has a land line, and it seems like poorer voters might not be able to afford land-line telephones. Wouldn’t this be inherently flawed since this group of unreachable voters would more than likely favor democrat candidates? Do pollsters somehow take account for this?
i wish i knew. this will be my seventh presidential election to vote in. i have always maintained a land line. and yet, i have never been polled. who are these people that are polled and how are they "randomly selected"?
What is your political party? Do you respond to pollsters, or if you’ve never talked to one would you if they called you? Personally I hang up the phone, I hate those guys.
You know who else hates those guys?
John Kerry
When statistical techniques are used to calculate confidence intervals for political polls?
Say that p is the true proportion, expressed as a fraction, of those who support political party A. This is what you would like to know but can’t know with certainty until there is a real election.
You ask a number of people whether they support A and suppose m say yes out of n definite replies. (Ignore don’t knows and people who don’t want to tell you.)
If you did the sampling process many times you would get different values of m for the same n value. This variation would be expected to relate to the Binomial distribution which can be approximated by the Normal distribution with large numbers such as >1000 in political sampling.
The mean of the Binomial is np and the standard deviation
sqrt[np(1 - p)]. Of course we don’t know p but m/n is a good estimate of it if the sample was large. This gives a mean of m and standard deviation of sqrt[m(1 - m/n)].
Confidence intervals are expressed as so many standard deviations usually 2. If n = 2400 and m = 960 say this gives you a standard deviation of 24. So 2s.d = 48 or about 2% either way.
Note that you need to 4 times the sample size to halve the confidence interval.
for real…i have my opinions, and if the government basis data from these polls, i would like to have a say in the matter.
or what’s up with that? i write my congressmen, is that seriously all the voice we have in our country?
Normally it is done by telephone.
Like the other answerer, I was called once. I answered all the questions, but had to decline to be contacted for other polls as my wife objected.
Could polling results be skewed in Senator McCain’s favor?
Because:
-Pollsters only call people with land lines.
-Most young voters (likely Obama supporters) only use cell phones.
-Many older voter’s views are counted while young voters largely refuse to participate in polls.
To tell you the truth, I’ve been called by pollsters more than once and I can tell you that I always told a lie if the question didn’t suit me.
So, to those who relies strictly on polls, you are making a HUMONGOUS mistake.
It seems to me that the media is using poll numbers to exclude the candidates who are not drawing large numbers according to their polls. In other words, they are widdling down the field and it isn’t their right to do that. Especially considering that so many people carry cell phones and are not going to be called to answer the polls. Then, when I consider that so many people have made it a point to put their home phone numbers on no call list, I can’t help believing that the majority of American voters are never call to answer a phone poll. Should American voters be doing something to force the major media outlets to stop intruding into the Presidential campains by eliminating candidates due to polling numbers?
Ok mild. I’ll have to take your word for that. But what about the fact that so many people don’t even have home phone numbers today, due to cell phones. And do the pollsters call the people who have internet phones, such as Vonage?
Did God himself come down to earth and tell you that Disneyland? How do you know that? And please don’t tell me that Hannity told you. He is hardly an unbiased source.
I find it interesting that none of you have bothered to touch the issue of the major media outlets, who eliminate candidates due to poll numbers, are overstepping their bounds. Shall I remind you that if polls had any validity, Howard Dean would have won Iowa in the last election?
Gd2cook, Good point. I was watching Tim Russert this morning. I consider him to be a good journalist. And he kept quoting poll numbers. That allowed him to only mention the 3 top runner, according to the polls, on the Democratic side, and the 4 top runners, according to the polls, on the Republican side. Neither he nor his guest panel mentioned the other candidates at all. That is not good journalism. Especially when one considers that the polls can be so wrong.
Hi,if America is the same has the UK Media then I take no notice of them.