Colorado State University Polling Report Voter’s Guide to Election Polls Discussion

Read Example1 and explain your take away. Add additional information. Your document should include minimum 200 words plus credible references.

Example 1:

The poll I chose to analyze is Education – “do you think free college tuition at public colleges or universities is a good idea or a bad idea?” This poll was a Marist Poll that was conducted between July 15-17 2019. The sample size was 1346 people and 53% said this was a good idea, 43% said this was a bad idea, and 5% were unsure (pollingreport.com). The margin of error is ± 3.5.

Based on this poll, the margin of error means that there’s a statistical chance that the poll can have a 3.5% error based on random sampling. The higher the margin of error, the more likely it is that an error occurred while collecting the data and gives analysts less confidence that the information from the poll is accurate. Based on the margin of error, one could interpret the data from this poll to read “between 53-57%” because it factors in the 3.5% error (Kalia, 2009).

Confidence interval is a range around a measurement that tells us how precise the measurement is (Confidence Intervals – Statistics Teaching Tools, n.d.). A confidence interval can also tell us how reliable the poll data is. For example, the education poll had 5% of users who were undecided, but the margin of error is 3.5%, so you could say this information is unreliable since the undecided percentage is higher than the margin of error (Confidence Intervals, Statistics Teaching Tools, n.d.).

References:

Department of Health. (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://health.ny.gov/diseases/chronic/confint.htm

Kalia, S. (2009, January 9). Statistics: Margin of Error – Reliability of the Data. Retrieved

September 10, 2020, from https://explorable.com/statistics-margin-of-error