What 's The Matter With Polling?

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.

In the article “The Myth of the Vanishing Voter” by Michael P. McDonald and Samuel L. Popkin, it is argued that the decline in voter participation in national elections since 1972 is an illusion created by the Bureau of the Census because it uses the voting-age population to calculate voter turnout instead of calculating the population of citizens who are eligible to vote (2001, 963).

Undoubtedly, the last 80 years have brought the biggest change to the election process - polling. Beginning with the Gallup poll in 1936, the industry has become a titanic business, growing unregulated by the United States government. Frequently, polls have come under fire for their inaccuracy, or for their role in blocking the Democratic process (the 2000 and 2004 elections come to mind). Nonetheless, the 1992 election was not notable because of alleged bias, but because of what the polls said about

Hearts sinking, fists clenching, frustration building up, American voters prepare for yet another painful presidential election. American elections are notorious for candidates bashing each other, constant television and telephone ads, and above all, shockingly low voter turnout. The list of reasons citizens do not vote goes on forever, but at the top of this ever-long list is one fact: voters in America simply do not believe that their votes matter in the grand scheme of things.

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

During the national elections in the US, the voter turnout often has been noticeably scant. People who have majored in political science and those who remained in that field discuss whether or not the minuscule turnout for the presidential election is acceptable for the country or no. As it’s discussed before, this is one incident where facts can be brought out for each individual to decide on their own if they accept the facts as a positive or negative. With that being brought to the forefront of your memory, I will spend the rest of this essay talking in apropos how it can be considered both positive and negative.

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).

In the Youth Survey conducted by Project Vote Smart, respondents aged 18-24 chose the World Wide Web as their most useful information source (“General Population”). McCain is utilizing the power of the Internet to build mailing lists, solicit contributions and to attract young voters, many of whom are “more acquainted with computer networks than political networks” (Sullivan, “Virtual”). The Internet has proved to be an important organizing tool in McCain’s campaign. Young people interested in becoming involved in his campaign will find a web site that devotes an entire page to each youth organization in each state. Pages consist of upcoming events, biographical information, photographs, links and contact information, putting various aspects of McCain’s campaign at the very technologically advanced fingertips of America’s youth (“Students 4 Dole”). Each page varies; some simply list contact information, while others have inspirational letters from McCain supporters and extravagant graphics like waving state flags. “Virtual” volunteers assist electronically, emailing everything from

In this essay, I would like to discuss the major obstacles to voting, recent changes to overcome voting barriers and the political influence of changed rules. Low turnout in the U.S. reflects that there are obstacles for people to voting and changes to overcome these obstacles may also bring new problems to different social groups. I will elaborate on these aspects in the following parts.

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

If not a single citizen were to participate in a democracy, that democracy would cease to exist. The very idea of a democracy is the notion that the people are in power and, therefore, will participate. Nevertheless, the trends of American voters in recent years have revealed that turnout is at a low point. According to Thomas Cavanagh, since the peek of electoral participation in post war 1960, voter-turnout has continually been on the decline (53). In other words, people just aren’t participating in the voting process as they used to. Moreover, this trend of low turnout doesn’t seem to occur only in less exposed congressional elections. Today, even in the highly publicized, closely contested, and salient presidential elections, only about 60% of the eligible voters participate—which is relatively low compared to the functioning democracies of Europe, where turnout consistently averages around 80% (The Case 591). The question for political scientists then becomes whether or not this trend of low voter turnout in American elections affects the government’s representation of its constituents (Teixeira 152). Put differently, do the results of a low turnout election actually represent the will of the people? Some political scientists assert that it does not, and believe that compulsory voting would be the quickest and most effective way to end this hindrance on representative democracy. Others, however, see it differently, and believe there is a set of traits that

In our globalized world, a realistic view of the attitudes of those from outside the United States is becoming increasingly necessary. When the organization began as the American Institute of American Opinion in 1935, it focused primarily on what determining what the average American consumer wanted from a company. Soon though, its methods were proven to be highly successful when they accurately predicted President Franklin’s victory in the 1936 election. Now, Gallup supplies objective political, economic, and social polls of citizens of more than 160 countries through its world poll network. Its success on an international level derives from its ability to tailor its methods to the country that the company is currently surveying. This flexibility based on region, combined with a rigid procedure for carrying out the survey, as well as a system of randomization to help ensure an even sample of the population being surveyed, make the Gallup poll one of the most successful of polls worldwide, in terms of accuracy and efficiency.