How much do polls tell us?

by integrityforamerica | September 19, 2008 at 11:43 pm
227 views | 34 Recommendations | 3 comments

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How much do polls tell us?

How much do polls tell us?

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The Rasmussen daily poll has Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama tied, with both pulling 48 percent of likely voters.

Although recent polls have become more confusing each day as Americans struggle to choose a candidate.  One must ask, How much do polls tell us?  I can search the internet and find many political polls that will give candidates a 3 or 4 point lead and a margin of error set at  3 or 4 points.  Polls can tell a story but how much of the whole story are we getting.

A huge flaw with polls in this election is the ability to reach out to a percentage of the population that use cell phones.  I asked a few of my interns this summer to give me their contact information and I noticed almost all of them that where living on their own did not have home phones.    I have never been polled on my cell phone but I have been polled many times on my house phone.  A large population of Americans are getting rid of house phones and using the cheaper alternative a personal cell phone.  

So how do we make sure a fair percentage of the population will be polled.  We can't, we seem to trust the polls and only few will admit that it is a real part of how they vote.





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Rhonda J Mangus
Rhonda J Mangus
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 06:53 on September 20th, 2008

integrityforamerica, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Karen Hatter
Karen Hatter
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 07:14 on September 20th, 2008

Integrityforamerica, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Fairbanks
Fairbanks
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 13:29 on September 20th, 2008

I am a regularly polled person.  I find that most of the polls have an economic basis such as what kind of things I buy or what stores I frequent, and they usually throw in some kind of political question along with demographics.  It depends on who is buying the poll and it is not usually a political party but some kind of marketing agency populating their database even though it is one of the usual major polling agencies conducting the poll. 

This story was created over 3 months ago, the comment thread is now closed.

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