How do they come up with presidential election polls?

Question

How do they come up with this polls that shows the ranking of the presidential candidates? I never got asked by anybody on how I vote.. Do they at random pick people to interview? Do they make phone calls to random people? How do they get this information and how accurate is it really?

Answer 1

There are several ways in which you can participate in presidential polls. If you sign up for regular emails from a news organization such as CNN or FOX, they send out their own poll questions via email to you.
Certain candidates such as John Edwards gives his supporters a list of websites you can go to in order to participate in these polls.

There are also web addresses that you can go to such as Zogby, CNN, FOX, and POLLING POINT, that ask these questions every quarter during an election year to get the current information about which candidates voters are supporting at the moment.

I personally subscribe free to all of these organizations, and there are at least a hundred more, to my inbox. It also keeps me up with current campaign and news info. I vote from there because these are the major polls, along with USA TODAY. Another one is the Des Moines Register Poll which is counted and important early on. But I am fortunate to live in Iowa, where I get to meet all of the candidates, or at least the ones I want to.

Very rarely do they take phone polls anymore. Mostly candidate call banks are set up to call people in voting districts (usually by the precinct captain), to secure a vote for their candidate.

I hope this has answered your questions. If you want your voice heard, sign up for the free subscriptions if you want to.
I have a huge spam filter and tons of security on my computer, so I don't get spam that is commonly sent to some of these websites.

However, I can tell you that you have to do your homework and find out who owns all of these newspapers and news stations. The owners usually influence the polls as to which candidate they want as the front runner.

For instance, in the 2004 election-Zogby poll which is often quoted on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, is owned by an Arab and an Arab organization. John Kerry had ties to the Zogby organization and received PAC money from them during his election. So they put him out front in their polls.
FOX is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who wants to see Guliani get in. So his polls will always be shaped with that candidate out front.

Lastly, people who vote by who is popular in polls make a big mistake. And then there is that mentality that people don't want to be on a losing team either. So they vote for whoever is popular. This is why polls don't work, and they are not accurate. They are biased. As well as exit polls that you hear about on election night. People tend to lie on those.

If you ever want to get into this further, there are several good books out there that talk about this subject, or volunteer on a campaign for the person you support. I did in 2004, and this is how I learned all of this information.

Answer 2

This one of the most interesting questions I have seen on here. You're right, after looking at the history it appears that the person with the most charisma wins. There is a difference with this year's election though, a lot of people have not forgotten what seemed to cause the economic downturn and skyrocketing national debt. When the Bush 2.0 took office he inherited a fiscal surplus. Eight years later, Obama inherited an economy in free fall. Bush 2.0 and the republicans can't be blamed for everything that happened, but they were at fault for the "Bush tax cuts" that have had a big hand in weakening the middle class, and republicans are always the reason that capitalism is under-regulated which allows for things like "credit default swaps" to exist, and for financial corporations becoming "too big to fail". I got off topic quite a bit there, so back to the question. I totally agree that voters tend to go with the candidate that has more charisma. I disagree that Romney lacks it though, and I feel this will become more apparent as the campaign continues. I think this has everything to do with human nature. Charisma is not actually a specific trait, and it covers a variety qualities that a person might have. Even still, we all seem to be able to come to consensus on who has it and who doesn't for the most part. We are hard wired to pick up on subtle and obvious things that let us know, this person has...it. So this truth seems to carry with it a big flaw when it comes to the democratic process: Voters are going to vote for the person rather than his/her policies. Not on the whole, but enough to decide who wins. Remember George W. won 2 times by slim margins. My sad conclusion: This trend will continue as long as the two party system dominates our democracy. I believe in democracy, but not in being forced to choose "the lesser of 2 evils" or always along party lines. As long as the race comes down to either the Democrat or the Republican who has the best smile. The worst part is that we technically have the power to change it, we could all vote based on our specific beliefs on what our country should be doing. I'm not just talking about the president, but congress and local government as well. If congress members didn't have the option to band together along party lines to force their party's agenda, then each representative would only be left with his or her opinion, and if his/hers constituency disagreed with said opinion, they would vote for someone else. Imagine the utopia. Anyway, you bring up an excellent point, and I guess my answer is that we need to get rid of the 2 party system for it to go away. I don't know how we do it, but it's the only way.

Answer 3

Well, the devil is in the details! What gets polling companies business is how well they form their question to what the desired, or anticipated result is - they get contributions too!

Polls rely on our constituents poor knowledge of the issues. They manipulate questions all too often to get the desired answer while ignoring the reality that one-shot questions have many other questions tagged to them due to the complexity of many issues. An example may be internet freedom. "Would you vote for a Candidate that does not restrict the use of the internet?" or "Would you vote for a Candidate that propagates the freedom of the internet?" These are flips of the same question, but the words "restrict", "freedom", and "propagate" elicit different emoptional responses. People like "freedom" but may want to "restrict" bad content on the internet for kids. The issue has many more points to it but they narrow it down for half-*** answers! Another way may be to say "Such and such candidate is for child pornography on the internet, would you vote for them?" - here, are they really for it becuase they support freedom of internet? I doubt it, but the question is a double-edge sword made to cross-reference different issues allowing the pollsters to arrive at their "purported" conclusions. Not very accurate if you ask me.

Issues should not be complicated. If a candidate explains it and you feel they are not saying it "straight-up" then they themselves are either lying or don't know.

The ones who say it straight forward with no "flare" are the solid guys.

Polls are just another way the media puts efforts in to forming public opinion.

Happy Holidays!

Answer 4

Random land line phone calls

Answer 5

They develop a neutral list questions and develop a statistically random sample of voter (usually likely voters) from voter rolls, contact these people and ask their opinions.

It is a VERY complicated science and can be quite accurate. But to truly understand the results you must look at the questions and sampling methods, something almost no one does.

Answer 6

It depends on which poll but they usually get about 1,000 responses and extrapolate out to the the state or country or whatever the goal.
Usually if you pay attn to the poll it will say how many responses it's based on.

Answer 7

It is different by pollers. Typically based upon land-line calls of previous voters.

Answer 8

it is truly made up,

the number one story is polls in all forms of media

it influences peoples opinions