# Measuring Public Opinion

## Public Opinion Polls 
polls that guage attitudes on issues or support for candidates in an ellection in a cross-section of the population

## Benchmark Polls
poll used by political campaign to figure out what the candidate's intentions are

## Tracking Polls
measure how prospective voters feel about an isussue

## Entrance Polls
conducted outside poilling places and are sued to gague election day and predicte elections
done before people vote

## Exit Polls

conducted outside poilling places and are sued to gague election day and predicte elections 
done after people finish their votes

## Approval Ratings
used to tell presidential approval 

## Focus Groups
small group of citizens 10 - 40 people to find out more minute detailes

## Questions 
questions need to be specifically framed and phrased to avoid skewing the results

## Sampling Techniques
different ways to assure an acurate poll 

## Representative Sample
a group of people meant to represent a larger group in question

## Universe
the large group in question

## Random Sample
everone being surveyed must have an equal chance of being surveyed

## Random-digit dialing
just calling randopm numbners in an area to attempt to survey people

##  Weighting/Stratificaiton
making sure demographic groups are properly represented

## Think as a Political Scientist 
Study the information below from December 2019 and answer the questions that follow.

1. What additional information might make this table more useful?
knowing what type of poll it might be especially between the different polls

2. What might explain the different results among the various polls?
the different ways of results might be due to different groups that got polled and or different polling techniques that would have highlighted diffent trends

3. What conclusions might be drawn from this information?
that biden has roughly a 9.3 lead across all the diffent polling groups

## Sampling error
difference between two different polls because of different people and sampling groups

## Margin of Error
another name for sampling error

## Non Attitudes
people may be uninformed or do not want to share views. or just do not have strong opinions 

## Human Bias and Push Polling
how the interviewer contacts and interacts can impact the poll

## Essential Question: What are the elements of a scientific poll and how do these elements impact elections and policy?

1. Elements of Scientific Poll
The poll must be using a diverse and random set of the uniuverse so that the margin of error is lowered as much as possible
2. Possible Effects on Decsion-Making
doing this might swkew the data results and points