Importance of Methodology
The Washington Post and
ABC news collaborated to conduct polls on the election. According to its archives,
the newspaper collaborates with various
groups in order to reach more diverse audiences and to have more resources to
devote to polling. Organizations include universities, publications and other organizations.
For this poll, they wanted
to know about voter attitudes towards the candidates. Therefore, they asked
questions such as how enthusiastic voters were to be voting for their chosen
candidate or if the tapes of Donald J. Trump’s comments about women influenced
voters attitudes.
What Methodologies Were
Used?
For this poll, 1,152 adults
were interviewed. A telephone sample was created using random
digit dialing. including both landlines and cell phones of both registered
and likely voters in the continental US. Pollsters asked to speak with the
youngest adult at home. Pollsters asked questions with pre-determined responses
for the respondents to choose from. To make the sample more representative of
the population, people with certain demographics had their responses weighted
higher than others.
In theory, telephone
surveys should be pretty accurate, since they allow for the randomness that
makes surveys accurate. However, they are not always representative because of
the trouble getting people to answer their phones and give answers. The weighting the pollsters apply is an
attempt to compensate for that. It isn’t clear why they didn’t choose to
include Hawaii and Alaska since they are part of the US and will be voting. The
plan of asking for the youngest adult could also introduce a bias, as
younger voters have consistently polled as more supportive of Hillary Clinton.
by Alex Giglio
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