highschool-senior/apgov/Measuring_Public_Opinion.md

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