pollster

Examples of pollster in the following topics:

• The Problems with Polls

  • In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of a large sample with the reduction in sampling error.
  • Another source of error stems from faulty demographic models by pollsters who weigh their samples by particular variables such as party identification in an election.
  • Some of these reflect errors on the part of the pollsters; many of them are statistical in nature.
  • That is, the actual sample is a biased version of the universe the pollster wants to analyze.
  • Many pollsters also split-sample in that one of two different versions of a question are presented to half the respondents.

• Types of Polls

  • Pollsters —usually private companies working for newspapers or broadcasters—conduct exit polls to gain an early indication as to how an election has turned out, since in many elections the actual result may take hours or even days to count.
  • In all such polls, the pollster asks leading or suggestive questions that "push" the interviewee towards adopting an unfavorable response towards the political candidate.

• The Gallup Organization

  • Truman election, where nearly all pollsters predicted a Dewey victory.

• Conducting Polls

• The Power of Incumbency

  • Nick Panagakis, a pollster, coined what he dubbed the "incumbent rule" in 1989—that any voter who claims to be undecided towards the end of the election will probably end up voting for the challenger.

• Analyzing Data

  • The more people that are sampled, the more confident pollsters can be that the "true" percentage is close to the observed percentage.

• Assembling a Campaign Staff

  • Modern campaign managers may be concerned with executing strategy rather than setting it, particularly if the senior strategists are typically outside political consultants such as primarily pollsters and media consultants.