How are Political Polls Conducted?
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"?
February 25th, 2010 at 2:12 am
I have no Idea but in my state WV there are Obama signs everywhere and McCain has a 7 point advantage. I guess people put them in thier yards to keep his supporters out off thier yards and driveways.
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February 25th, 2010 at 2:23 am
Most polling companies take random lists of phone numbers. The model of calling has changed in the last few years, as the companies are reaching out to more and more cellphone numbers. I’m not sure if they take a percentage of cell phones or if it is just a random sample, but this is accounted for — at least to some extent. (It has been suggested that such numbers are a little underrepresented in polling.)
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February 25th, 2010 at 3:13 am
You are right. There has been some discussion this year about certain groups being unrepresented. Polls are conducted among (usually) registered voters at their home land line. Those without a home phone (or maybe with caller ID) are not going to be polled.
I don’t know that it is accurate to say that the pollling group not represented is predominately democrat. It is more accurate to say that there are groups of people not contacted and leave it at that.
Maybe thats one of the reasons why the polls were so far off four years ago.
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February 25th, 2010 at 3:39 am
Well, polling firms will take a phone book of a respective region, count out enough numbers from the book to make a statistically correct poll, and start calling numbers. If no one answers, then they’ll just draw another phone number at random and call that one instead.
There are also different types of polling, like Clustered and Stratisfied polling. Both techniques are used when drawing numbers to call.
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February 25th, 2010 at 3:49 am
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"?
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