Public Opinion Poll

A vast amount of public opinion polling takes place during election cycles. These polls are studied by evaluating a sample of a population. Pollsters aim to study random sample of the population to gain a true understand of the public opinion. Unfortunately, pollsters often run into what is known as a sample bias. This is when a sample does not represent the public true opinion. Instead in sample bias only a fragment of the opinions is present. Though polls are subject to error, they do have the ability to echo the sentiments of the population. I believe this is both most effective and prevalent in exit polls. The important of exit polls as highlighted in the article “Exit polls and voter turnout” by Asger Lau Anderson and Thomas Jensen. In the article the authors suggest that exit polls drive voters to get involved. They state that “In relation to the debate on the implications of exit polls, the most important insight from our analysis is the following. It may well happen that the incentive to vote increases after the revelation of an exit poll.” By suggesting this, the authors relay the idea that exit polls are the way to truly gain an understanding of the public opinion.

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.

George Gallup was a pioneer in survey sampling techniques and founded Gallup Inc., known for the Gallup Poll. The Gallup Poll is a sector of the company that focuses on conducting public opinion polls. Gallup and his new company gained recognition in 1936 when he correctly predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would beat Alf Landon in the

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

This then leads into what is the sample size is too small and is not a great representation of the overall population. If the sample size is too small, it could lead to selection bias which is when the sample does a terrible job representing the actual ideologies of the population in that area. Push polling, which is asking questions in a way that gives the pollster the answer that is being sought out, is often another technique used to potentially skew the outcome. All of these are factors that could potentially be important when it comes to the outcome of the polls. Make sure to keep in mind that whenever a poll is taken there is always a way that someone/something can skew it to their

According to the article, small differences in methods between popular polls can result in large differences when voter commitment is still uncertain (Tackett, 2012). During this election, polls were a great source of information for voters to use in their decision making process. Bloomberg’s poll surveyed 1,002 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the full sample. This means that if the polls were conducted 100 times, the data would be within 3 points above or below the reported percentage in 95 of 100 surveys (Tackett, 2012).

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

Gallup is an organization which works to create accurate statistics reflecting the population of various countries. Gallup has been around for more than eighty years, and has the most knowledge about the views of people than any other organization in the world. Gallup has several different series of polls, one in particular is the Gallup Poll Social Series. This poll series is used to figure the view of US adults on a wide range of topics. Gallup knows what they are doing, and have set up their polling process to be as representative to the real population as possible, such as weighing the answers of participants based off of actual US demographics, and calling both cellular and house phones.

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

Surveys can be used to collect information on a wide range of things, including personal facts, attitudes, past behaviors, and opinions. Survey research can be specific and limited, or it can have more global, widespread

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

In the article The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Public Opinion Polls there are many types of polls and poll reports that at a quick glance might seem to be giving accurate information, but when looked at critically the discrepancies begin to show. Most average people who see political polls or any other polls usually don’t question the results let alone go and do research to see if those results are true or if they are bias. This tends to leave people misinformed and can cause them to be easily convinced by people like politicians. Fortunately, we live in the modern age where information is readily available to us, and with a click of a button we can search for the true results. But where do we start and how do we know if the results of a

The type of question this poll was asking was about how different parties view Police Officers, College Professors, Military, Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, and Conservatives. The question on asking how they rank these type of political beliefs or profession is important to see how the average citizen views these professions, especially now with more extreme political beliefs now and the views of Police with the issue of Police Brutality. This issue is not extremely pressing as it asks the opinion citizens to have for different groups (Democrats, Conservatives, Military). The question seemed to be very neutral and not really skewed to have a preference on one side or another. The question was “How do you feel towards [INSERT ITEM; RANDOMIZE]?

One thing that I found odd while researching for this paper is the variety of poll results across a small selection of sources. For instance, CNN posted a poll update in late January, stating that our President’s job approval ratings were at an all-time low at 36%. Underneath the large heading and introductory statement, they mentioned that the information was gathered by one national poll that was provided by one university. Should the findings of one poll, given by one university, be published as if they represent all of the American population’s views? Personally, I do not feel the need to pay attention to polls when it comes to national politics. I am generally distrusting of the agendas that many news outlets support when it comes to national polls, even though I still believe that polls aren’t entirely unnecessary. I fully support the idea of giving the public a way to compare views and express personal