Polls

Polls are a useful method for collecting information about the public's opinions, attitudes, and behavior in a variety of political contexts. Good-quality polling results in information that describes these attributes of a relevant population to which inferences can be drawn from the sample of the respondents who were interviewed. Polls and surveys are employed by political campaigns, news organizations, and interest groups who want to understand the public's reactions to actual or potential events in order to develop strategy, report on current events, or contribute to the development of public policy.

A poll is a form of data collection that typically involves a sample of respondents, drawn to represent an underlying relevant population, who are asked a standardized series of questions in a fixed form. The ...