Television stations, radio stations, and newspapers often use polls to predict the winners of elections long before the votes are cast. What factors might cause a pre-election poll to be inaccurate?
Please help.....
2007-02-26 16:47:00 · 6 answers · asked by litz 3 in Education & Reference ➔ Homework Help
I would say the #1 factor is people having an opinion and a favorite candidate and not actually showing up to vote.
The media takes a sample (usually by calling) to ask which candidate the person will vote for. Everyone will either hang up or just give the answer of their intended candidate. If they don't end up actually showing up to vote, the media's poll is completely inaccurate.
And yes, too small of a sample size is the obvious answer. Go with that if you feel like it.
But consider that the true deviation when considering sample size includes the #1 factor. Will they actually vote or not?
2007-02-26 16:53:11 · answer #1 · answered by ? 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The owners of whatever media vector we look at may be owned by someone who supports a particular party leading them to be biased towards a specific candidate who actually might not be all that popular. Or too much coverage might lead people to seek out the underdog or to just look at other canadidates as opposed to the one they are being constantly bombarded with through the media. Also the people who media broadcasts to may be a small group who may vote in a poll for their fav. candidate but actually just be a small sample of the population. For example if I had a radio station that broadcasted only in the state of virginia and everyone in virginia like the candidate Mr. Green and nobody else in the country knew about mr green, then a poll conducted by my radio station would show a great amount of support for mr green just because of the location.
2007-02-27 01:03:18 · answer #2 · answered by Petalouda 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Surveys are usually never a good thing to predict winners of elections. if you open up a survey to anyone and you ask for people to vote it is all on a voluntary basis so even though one candidate is more favorable..if his followers dont vote then the other candidate will have more votes (which just shows nothing since its not an accurate survey) because of being "biased" meaning only on a voluntary basis. Basically its like putting out the survey to the whole world and only 10% vote.
2007-02-27 00:59:41 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
First, polls only survey one person from each household. The person surveyed may be the only of ten people in that house with that particular opinion.
Second, Factors may change between the poll and the election. A politician may suddenly declare war, and that could cause all sorts of problems.
Finally, the poll may be conducted in an area where everyone supports one particular party. This means that the poll will only be accurate to that area, and not be widespread.
2007-02-27 00:54:10 · answer #4 · answered by Ben 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Too small of a sampling size( not enough people polled to be accurate).
Not polling people at random(like standing outside a union hall and getting a lot of people saying they are going to vote democrat).
Doing the poll to far in advance.
2007-02-27 00:53:17 · answer #5 · answered by PZ 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
The sample could be too small, or gathered in an area where the political parties are not well distributed.
2007-02-27 00:54:45 · answer #6 · answered by Jeanne B 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋