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She’s up 6%.No, he’s up 6%.If they vary so much, can we trust political polls?
“Absolutely, absolutely.”
David Dutwin is in charge of methodology at SSRS,a survey firm where hundreds of interviewers work on 20 opinion polls a day.
“Hello, ma’am, my name is Russell Lance,”Internet polls are unreliable, door-to-door polling costs too much, so companies use phones.But, “Lots of things have changed.”
“Part of the problem is in your pocket, 9 out of 10 of us own this, instead of this, hello.”
“Half of the United States’ households don’t own a landline telephone anymore.”
“Hello, my name is Valentina Martinez.”
Laws forbid recorded calls on mobiles,so real people have to do the interview, and will met with this:
“‘A call when I’m busy’, and then they just hang up right away.”
“They don’t have the time, they’re busy, they’re driving.”
In fact, it takes up to 40 calls to get one single interview.
“Oh, I’m sorry ma’am, when will be the available time to call you?”
But calling a cell has its benefits, says Courtney Kennedy of Pew Research.
“We’re able to reach a lot of the groups who were traditionally hard to reach,such as young adults, African Americans, Hispanics, that we really struggle to reach on landlines.”
Participants are typically reluctant to give their opinions on issues.But this election, interviewers say they can’t get them to stop talking.
“Yes, oh my gosh, yes.”
Interviewers like Martinez ask the same questions verbatim, so the answers are statistically valid.1000 participants is the magic number, because the sample that size has the same demographics as the US population.And the combine results carry a low 3% margin of error,which is crucial to remember when looking at the fluctuating polls.
