Arguments To Aggregate Polls

Public opinion polls come in a wide-set of different subjects and are good examples of inductive arguments that are seen and used in our day to day lives to measure the public’s views regarding a particular topic or topics done so by taking a non-biased survey/questions. This is an excellent example of inductive arguments, because the person or party/entity conducting these surveys, is looking to validate their argument and assumptions, or to provide a guarantee of truth in the concluding result. However, it is not simply easy to rely on “experts” and believe that the data from these polls they collect, are completely accurate and are not skewed from their own biases. Since a survey is an inductive generalization, a sample is taken from the target population from which a conclusion is drawn regarding the entire population.Which makes these inductive arguments fall into two categories: either weak or strong.

Campaigns in politics are important in determining outcomes and inform the voters who remain undecided. Also, campaigns matter because although the candidates or media officials may know what the outcome will be, the voters themselves do not (107). Aside from campaigns, conventions are also important, if not more important. Party nominating conventions affect the apathetic, uninterested electorates who think conventions are interesting and exciting, often known as the Olympic games of politics (121). This experience for voters can carry influence, and is a time of “intense political learning” (129). Therefore, aggregately, conventions make public opinion meaningful because the citizens who watch make an informed decision about a candidate, and have facts about why they will vote for that candidate. The chief reason why individual public opinion is meaningless during presidential elections is the “nonattitudes.” Nonattitudes are survey responses made up on the spot during an interview by a respondent who has no attitude on politics (113). Therefore, these individuals diminish the value of public opinion because we hate inconsistency and this creates an abundance of views on issues. However, during election night, exit polls support why aggregate opinion is also important. Exit polls are meaningful because one hundred percent of those leaving the polls have voted (102). Therefore, we can get real results from the electorates and this makes collective public opinion

_____ Referring to Question #10 above, which of the following best describes why you might be cautious in relying on these results? (A) The sample size is too small to make any reliable inference about the entire population. (B) Silly questions sometimes generate silly responses, not true opinions. (C) The respondents may not be a representative sample of any population of interest. (D) Newspapers tend to skew results to fit their own agenda.

The Quinnipiac University poll was done during early September to test the waters before the first presidential debate between Clinton and Trump. The sample size was roughly 960, supposedly voters from across the nation with a margin of error of +- 3.2 which isn’t horrible. The numbers look fine and because it was a nationwide poll, the possibility of getting a fair and accurate cross section of views is fairly high, that being said there are a few issues with this poll that cause me to be concerned with the accuracy of this poll for many reasons.

The title of the article is a little misleading because the polls that are misleading are the ones that need to “stop the polling insanity.” Will they? No. So, the point of the article is that it is up to the individual reading the polls to assess

I think it is also worth noting that Green and Palmquist use the NES poll data in their study which bring us back to the first question which is how to accurately measure partisanship? If question asked by pools can heavily change the result of studies we need to know what question to ask when we are measuring short term variance and when we are measuring long term variance. I think the Gallup poll might be useful to measure the short term variance in macro partisanship and the NES and GSS poll might be effecting when it comes to long term shifts in partisanship. However these article failed to discuss the polls in general and find if the interviewed population is representative of the US population. Abramson and Ostrom also briefly talked about the effect telephone poll can have on polls result but it was discussed in depth. In last week Alan S. Gerber and Donald P. Green found positive effect of personal contract on voting. Doing interviews for polls might have better result than telephone

The first difference between the two polls exists with regards to the question, “Do you think the U.S. government is doing enough or not doing enough to prevent a future terrorist attack on American soil?” (See Appendix A for graphic depiction). Overall, the respondents in my convenience poll were more diverse in their response choice, with the largest percentage being those who think the Unite States Government was doing enough at 46.43% and the lowest percent being those who are unsure at 25%. This is only a 21.43 point gap. Whereas the scientific poll showed a

Public opinion can be defined as the collective opinion of many people on some issue. When it comes to elections, party members attempt to estimate a candidate favorability by polling the public using different techniques such as: calling, online surveys, panels, and exit polls. However, when trying to get the statistically most accurate result, party member must be weary of biases like biased questions, undercoverage, and sampling bias.

election to what they think the future will hold because of it. What is evident is that the polls

According to Nate Cohn of the The New York Times says “the poll is extremely and admirable transparent: It has published a data set and the documentation necessary to replicate the survey.” The poll appears to display a non-probability sampling method with the determine sample size

Once it becomes a legal issue, even people who believe that projections are harmful, or that exit polls are sometimes misused, should unite and say that the law should not be used to stop people

In the New York Times article “What’s the Matter With Polling?” public policy and political science professor Cliff Zukin argues that polls and pollsters have grown to be unreliable due to the growth of cellphones and the decline in people willing to answer surveys. Since a higher percentage of people have acquired and use cellphones more than landlines in the past decade and the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act has been interpreted to prohibit the calling of cellphones through automatic dialers, survey companies have to devote more money, time, and resources to contacting potential participants. The rapidly declining response rate has also increased the risk of surveys failing to reflect public opinion, and therefore increase the number of failed predictions. Although conducting polls on the Internet is cheaper, “coverage error” is prominent, and Internet use correlates inversely with age and voting habits, making it even more difficult to predict the outcome of elections. Beyond this, as Zukin illustrates, it is nearly impossible to figure out how to draw a representative sample of Internet users.

It seems to me that we are just fascinated with polls. That almost everything is based on a poll, and they often base their opinions and views of the world on their results. Politicians do the same, but to a much greater extent. Most leaders will try to base their decisions largely on their poll numbers. I think that it is not right for them to base everything off poll. Polls are a way to make the voice of the individual citizen heard. Unfortunately, it is not simple. That reason is be causes that polls are not that accurate or reliable for many reasons. Some of those reasons are that; the samples are too small to represent the population, the result from the polls can be presented in a way that misleads many people, the result of the polls

The reason why is because there are certain factors and variables that aren’t taken into account that should be in order to create the most accurate public opinion poll possible. One website that outlines which criteria should be met in the form of answering 5 important questions is the website crf-usa.org. This website recommends asking yourself the following five questions when analyzing the results of any public opinion poll, “1. Who Was Interviewed? Generally speaking, the accuracy of a poll depends upon the degree to which the characteristics of the people being interviewed are really similar to those of the group they are supposed to represent. For example, the polling of sixteen-year-olds to predict the outcome of an election would be very questionable since they cannot vote. Also, as a general rule, the greater the number of people interviewed, the more likely the prediction will be accurate. Everything else

Now I have heard some people on here and other places say "well those polls under represent under 30 voters, so they are sh#t".