Scotty2Hotty Posted October 16, 2008 Report Share Posted October 16, 2008 We hear speak of this pole has Obama by 2, or this pole McCain by 6. Where in the hell are these "polls" getting these votes? Is it a telephone poll, online poll, mail in poll, what are they? I know every Tom, Dick and Harry in the US of A aren't involved in all these polls. This is why I question their accuracy on true voting percentages. Also, who they hell does these, and how many people do them to come up with their percentage? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GonneVille Posted October 16, 2008 Report Share Posted October 16, 2008 Polls are shit. There's only one poll number that matters. Until that one comes down, fuck em all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Hal Posted October 16, 2008 Report Share Posted October 16, 2008 Polls are actually done very scientifically. I can't explain tonight because I'm tired and don't care. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GonneVille Posted October 16, 2008 Report Share Posted October 16, 2008 Polls are actually done very scientifically. I can't explain tonight because I'm tired and don't care. I'm somewhat familiar with the methods of polling, but the margins of error and number of undecideds are ridiculous, so I don't bother with them. Scotty, the news polls are done by phone with random samples, by polling agencies. They'll use a random-numbers generator to select phone numbers from their chosen region. I don't know how they determine the number of people they call or their criteria for how they word the questions asked to be totally neutral. If it's an opinion poll, you can pretty much figure that the question is skewed one way or another, so opinion polls truly ARE worthless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supldys Posted October 16, 2008 Report Share Posted October 16, 2008 If a poll doesnt give you the exact question they asked, don't even bother caring. Some break it down and say whats the biggest problem in the country?(economy, national security, etc.) Then who do you think can best handle it? Then they infer that that isa vote for that candidate, which is usually only done by the little crap polls. Gallup is usually good, theyve been doing it awhile. and I think American research group is the other good one, i cant remember. heres a good site with all the different polls http://www.pollingreport.com/wh08gen2.htm Avoid any polls that aren't telephone polls. Online polls and street corner polls only get the people that come by. But telephone polls also only cater to those that have a home phone, are home when the phone rings, and have the time to take the survey. the key is random sampling, thats what makes the mathematic part work with the small population and the MoE. The best way is to take that random sample of say 1200, multiple times of different populations, then find the average. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conesmasher Posted October 16, 2008 Report Share Posted October 16, 2008 We hear speak of this pole has Obama by 2, or this pole McCain by 6. Where in the hell are these "polls" getting these votes? Is it a telephone poll, online poll, mail in poll, what are they? I know every Tom, Dick and Harry in the US of A aren't involved in all these polls. This is why I question their accuracy on true voting percentages. Also, who they hell does these, and how many people do them to come up with their percentage? Well, so far Obama is giving his big pole to McCain. McCain can't get his pole up....Viagra & Cialis be damned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rch10007 Posted October 16, 2008 Report Share Posted October 16, 2008 I like to poll often... It's not really scientific, unless you count math and biology as science. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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