Political Polls
What numbers can we really trust?
Fox News
is a prominent contributor in delivering election news. Their online blog
outlines the overall sampling, interviewing, weighting and accuracy
methodology, all of which are important to consider when determining which
polls to trust.
Can We Trust Fox News
Poll?
Upfront, Fox News states that their polls, in general, are
conducted via telephone using a nationally representative sample of the
population that is comprised of roughly 1,000 registered voters. 530 are
conducted through landlines and 470 are through cell phones.
Another method of control Fox News practices, is
their use of probability proportionate to size, meaning that phone numbers for
each state and proportional to the number of voters in each state. Their sample
also mirrors gender proportional nationally, so that 53% of females are
surveyed and 47% of males are surveyed.
Poll sponsorship can sometimes skew the results. A strength
of the Fox News Poll is that it is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research, a liberal
research company and Shaw &
Company Research, a conservative research business.
At 36 questions a recent the poll is relatively
lengthy. The poll was conducted by live interviewers via telephone from October
15– 17, 2016, and it resulted with a margin of error of plus or minus three
percentage points.
Fox News Poll keeps an active Twitter account, where they post all of
their poll results as well as real time campaign news.
by Sarah Richardson
0 comments:
Post a Comment