• @WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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    21 year ago

    I was curious about who the 64% of Americans are, because I’ve never done a poll in my life. This is what I found:

    NORC gathers data for the polls through its probability-based AmeriSpeak® Panel, a breakthrough survey approach that achieves an industry-leading response rate and includes difficult-to-reach demographic groups, such as rural and low-income households.

    For AmeriSpeak’s Omnibus survey, 1,000 nationally representative adults age 18 and older are drawn from the AmeriSpeak Panel and are interviewed online and by phone.

    The people that are drawn from the panel are all preregistered. So these people sign up, and are asked questions every month. The same people. Every month. Then they do some sort of probability math on those numbers and run it as a news story.

    • @breadcodes@lemm.ee
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      141 year ago

      That’s how polls work. I’m not sure if you genuinely don’t know, but that’s just how they are done.

      You can very accurately extrapolate data on the entire population with just 1000 participants. The flaw is in geography distribution, population distribution, willingness to poll, and other types of sample bias, but if they account for those then that’s perfectly valid.

      • @WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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        61 year ago

        I did not know. That’s why I said I didn’t know and looked it up, and then shared the info i found :)

        • @CoderKat@lemm.ee
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          61 year ago

          Good on you for looking it up. I’ve seen so many comments from people who don’t look it up and just go “they only asked 2000 people so this is bullshit”. I initially had thought your original comment would be just another one of those till I read it all.