How Are You to Know Which Polls to Trust?

The results of voter surveys and polls guided the political campaigns of many presidents and their opponents and advised news groups on which political strategies are working. While polls have an important role in the political process, they are anything but perfect tools for measuring and forecasting voter behavior. Public opinion often changes daily or weekly (or so the polls report this to be the case). Further, even worse, competing polls report contradictory results over the same period of time. How are you to know which polls to trust?

There are many reasons why taking a sample is better than taking the entire population. Taking a sample costs less money and takes significantly less time (Bethel, 2010). Additionally, it is in essence impossible to survey the entire population due to the fact that people are not easily available. Accuracy is another reason to take samples (Bethel, 2010). The results produced by taking a sample are more accurate than the results produced by taking the entire population because you can never actually have the entire population (Bethel, 2010). Samples record margins of error because they are known not to be perfect rather than saying this is the truth of the entire population. Destructiveness of observations is the fifth reason that makes taking a sample more beneficial. For example, when batteries are tested to see how long they last, they are used/destroyed (Bethel, 2010). In turn, it would be senseless to test the entire population of batteries because there would be no batteries left to sell (Bethel, 2010).

While taking a sample is better than surveying the entire population, there are certain steps that should be followed in order to do so successfully. First off when conducting polls, it is important to find the target population (Mirabella, 2011, p. 3-2). For example, when election polls are done, U.S. citizens who are likely to vote should be the targeted population (p. 3-2). Second, a sampling frame should be...