Political Polling Question (not political)

emilybee
Tue, 02 Feb 2016 15:27:20 +0000

I did polling work way back in graduate school ( late 1980’s) and then they were amazingly accurate. I think they are less so now but not by much. I’m sure the polling firms factor in use of cell phones now. People generally don’t understand how a poll of 500 or 1000 people can determine outcomes, but many factors go into the selection of who is polled.

There were polls in Iowa the last few days showing both Cruz and Rubio surging. http://media.wix.com/ugd/3bebb2_0f8be4ffea6949a298ba44d6eba0a6da.pdf

The polls in the last presidential election were also accurate. People got confused because certain people were saying the polls were “skewed” but in fact they weren’t. The Romney camp believed they were skewed too. Oops.