PREDICTING AND POLLING
POLLING AND PREDICTING
I know. I know. When pollsters get on cable, their explanations seem like mush. So I would like to introduce you to a small amount of information that may help you through this election.
A random sample means that every registered voter has the chance of being chosen. When the numbers come in, the closer the race the harder it is to know the outcome. This is because of what is called the “margin of error.”
As an example, Zenith is a small Midwestern city. It has 100,000 registered voters. There is a contest between two white males for mayor. Jones is for “good government” and Smith is for “planting more and more trees.” Smith may have the issue. Zenith was hit with a huge wind storm with a funny name. What was not so funny was that thousands of trees were killed. Zenith is a community of many seasons and “water and woods.” There are so many lakes and ponds and a river that cuts right through the city. The water was okay, but not the trees. Oh man, so we draw a random sample. We draw a sample of just 96 people. The overlap or the margin of error is 10 % Jones 30 and Smith 70. That means that Jones could go down to 20 votes or up to 40 votes and still not catch Smith. He can go down to 60 votes and up to 80 votes. They are too far apart. So why don’t we quit? Something may be wrong, because the accuracy is 95% of the time out of a perfect 100%. Okay, we are not comfortable with the forecast.
So we sample more people. How about 1,067 people? We still get the 30 to 70 split and the overlap or margin of error is 3% up or 3% down, the “Good Government” guy can get 27 to 33 voters and the “Tree guy” can get 67 voters to 73 voters.
It is now a waste of money to sample any more. Folks want trees and they tell the pollster. However, what if we kept going? How about a sample of 10,000 voters? There is a margin of error that is 1%. That is 69 voters to 71 voters versus 29 to 31. Nope. The 2 candidates are too far apart. We have more useful things to do. The “Tree guy” is the clear winner.
However, there are still more problems that we’ll save for another day. If you want you can go to real clear politics.com or better yet silver’s 5:38.com to get the results that may be fairly accurate. Be sure to look at the reviews the week-end and Monday before the election on Tuesday.
Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won their elections and polls said so. However, there is the Electoral College and that is something you have to describe to a person of another country very slowly and clearly.
Don’t you see? The U.S.A. is exceptional! The Electoral College is really hard to explain. So, someone will explain that to you later.
Joel Snell
319-366-0063
3105 Alleghany Dr. NE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
52402-3315