Do you think 1,000 is sufficient as a number when polling?

Question

Considering we have over 40million voters now should the minimum poll size be 4,000 (0.01% of the electorate)

Answer 1

I think as long as that 1,000 is a fair cross-section of society, then it seems a reasonable amount. If you make the pool too large, it makes the data very difficult to work and collect.

I think 1,000 is fair enough.

Answer 2

The sample size will determine the margin of error. This is usually provided by any half decent poll. 1000 will generally produce a fairly low margin of error -3-4%. It is the size of the sample, not the % of the population that determines this. For instance in a population of 2, a poll of 1 will give a 25% margin of error even though it is 50% of the population.

Answer 3

Its been a while since I took the class, but you can get the statistical likelihood of your poll of being correct.  This is why every poll shows a margin of error (+/-3%).

At 1,000 polled, you can be 95% sure that your results are within 3% of the actual figures.  From here, increasing accuracy is an exponential deal, and it takes 10,000 new polled people to increase the certainty by 1 additional percent.  To reach 100% absolute certainty, you would have to ask everyone.

Answer 4

For a poll result to be reflective of the public as voters it would need to me adjusted to account for the quantity of participating voters (35%?). Polls are misused continually. The results of a poll of a thousand people is that of thousand, x respond '+', y respond '-', and the proverbial margin of error. What this means is, if the results are made available, we can learn what the inherent biases of the poll author were, and how up to a thousand people responded, between answering the cell phone and answering the call of nature.

Answer 5

1,000 is statistically accurate enough for the purposes of most polls: it's a balance between accuracy and cost given the number of polls conducted regularly in countries such as the UK/US.  As said above, the number of persons polled expands exponentially for any increase in statistical accruacy, so 1000 is a good compromise.

However, I would add that better cross sections and more fairly worded questions needs to be worked towards by all pollsters.

Answer 6

I think we should concentrate on getting a fairer cross section of society

Answer 7

You are correct, we have to many voters and a sample of 1,000 voters is not an accurate depiction of the true American voting concensus. Besides most os the polls are run by the media and they favor thier ideals and beliefs.

Answer 8

Poling is a science, so this is a math/statistics question.   The sample size is important and so is the sample distribution.   But with a proper distribution, a poll of 1000 will give a pretty true indicator.

When polls go wrong (which is not all that often) it can be a sampling error, or it could be poorly worded questions.  In 1948, the prediction of Dewey defeating Truman was based largely on telephone polls.  Well it happened that in 1948 a large portion of the voting public still did not have telephones and they were not part of the sample.   The same thing may be happening again.  People who have no land line (only a cell phone) will not be included in a telephone pool.  If that number gets big enough and there is a big enough difference in the opinions of people with only cell phones versus land lines, then results can get skewed.  

The pollsters know this.  They are working out the impacts.

Answer 9

10000 would be more accurate

Answer 10

1000 can be okay the main thing is to have a proper cross section of the particular population you are trying to poll.  If you want an opinion from a cross section of the whole population then taking the first 1000 people coming out of Watford station one evening is no good. You would need to take opinions from 10 people picked at random from 100 towns spread all over the UK.

Answer 11

The answer to this is - ask everybody. Give everybody a say on every issue, everywhere.

Of course a site has been launched to do just that.

Answer 12

depends on what you want to know,

Answer 13

Mathematically,statistically, 1,000 is enough providing that it is a genuinely random sample.

Unfortunately, the sample would typically not be random or representative of the population because it would mainly comprise of sad people such as us with nothing better to do.

Therefore the sample size as you say needs to be significantly larger

Answer 14

1000 is plenty if the people that are included come from a good sample from across the country.