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A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

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Home > Statistics Every Writer Should Know > The Stats Board > Discusssion

Jumpy CNN/Gallup tracking poll
Message posted by Rick on October 8, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

I hope a general-interest puzzlement
question inspired by the election
isn't out of line here.

In the last week, the CNN/USA Today/Gallup
tracking poll has swerved pretty wildly --
from a margin of Gore +2 to Gore + 11
to Bush +8 -- in the course of a few days.
Other tracking polls (Reuters/Zogby and
Voter.com/Goeas-Lake) have not shown any
comparable movement.

Can anyone venture a reason or reasons for
the very large movements in that one poll?

-- Rick


READERS RESPOND:
(In chronological order. Most recent at the bottom.)

Re: Jumpy CNN/Gallup tracking poll
Message posted by JG on October 8, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

There are many possible reasons, such as sample size, thr randomness of the sample, a true dynamic shift in public opinion, etc. Basically, without additional information, this poll may be much better/worse than the others or this poll used too small a sample size, or the other polls are not really random, etc.



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