pollster

(noun)

A professional whose primary job is conducting pre-election polls.

Related Terms

Examples of pollster in the following topics:

  • Telephone Surveys

    • Previously, pollsters physically had to go to each interviewee's home (which, obviously, was more time consuming).
    • That is, the actual sample is a biased version of the population the pollster wants to analyze.
    • If the pollsters only choose telephone numbers from a telephone directory, they miss those who have unlisted landlines or only have cell phones (which is is becoming more the norm).
    • In addition, if the pollsters only conduct calls between 9:00 a.m and 5:00 p.m, Monday through Friday, they are likely to miss a huge portion of the working population—those who may have very different opinions than the non-working population.

  • Introduction to Estimation

    • For example, if the pollster used a method that contains the parameter 95% of the time it is used, he or she would arrive at the following 95% confidence interval: 0.46 < π < 0.60.
    • The pollster would then conclude that somewhere between 0.46 and 0.60 of the population supports the proposal.

  • 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.

  • Audience Opinion of You and Your Topic

    • Pollsters used surveys to sample the nation to determine how people rated the candidates on a number of different questions, and reported the favorabilty of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama as it changed based on the survey results.
    • You will also notice that opinion pollsters report on the attitudes of large group of people about different topics of national interest.

  • Ethical Usage: Considering Other Viewpoints

    • Though many researches, scientists, pollsters, and investigators do their best to avoid fallacies, the possibility always exists that one may be proven.

  • 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.

  • Estimation

    • For example, if the pollster used a method that contains the parameter 95% of the time it is used, he or she would arrive at the following 95% confidence interval: $0.46 < p <0.60$.
    • The pollster would then conclude that somewhere between 46% and 60% of the population supports the proposal.

  • How Well Do Probability Methods Work?

    • Careful training of pollsters can greatly reduce response bias.

  • The Gallup Organization

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

  • Estimating a Population Proportion

    • Assume a political pollster samples 400 voters and finds 208 for Candidate $A$ and 192 for Candidate $B$.