Polling Report the Poll Chosen

Polling Report

The poll chosen was the "Right Track/Wrong Track" poll from Polling Report.com. I believe this poll is scientific because the pollsters polled 1,000 adults nationwide with no other criteria, so any adult in the country had a chance of being polled. The results were plus or minus 3.1 margin of error. I think the reliability of the results is questionable because of the relatively small sample of people, and a larger sampling might have produced more reliable results. This poll is more reliable than others because it is scientific, and it also lists prior results all the way back to 2002, so the results can be tracked and the reader can see where public opinion has changed.

The purpose of this poll seems to be twofold. One purpose is to show how a sampling of the American people feel, and what their opinion is. The poll relates to the job the government is doing and asks if the country and its policies are heading on the right track or the wrong track. In the last survey, 59% of the people feel it is headed on the wrong track, while 36% of the people feel it is headed in the right direction, and 5% are unsure of where the country is going. This shows that a majority of the people polled are not happy with the current direction the country is taking, and feel government should take a different direction.

The second purpose of this poll is to show history, and to show how our current government compares in similar samples from January 2002 until the present. This is extremely helpful to see how public opinion has changed. If specific dates and times of particular happenings are known (such as the invasion of Iraq, for example), then the poll can show trends, highs, lows, and how important events may spike the poll. It is interesting to note that since January 2005, 51% or more of the respondents think the country is heading down the wrong track. I believe the reliability of the results is questionable, first because the poll only sampled 1,000 people, and that is not a true sampling of enough people to get a true result. If the poll sampled 50,000 or 100,000 people it would be more representative of the nation as a whole. I think the poll is an opinion of the respondents, but is not necessarily the opinion of the entire nation.