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I'm from NY, but did go to school for piiltocs and government, so here is my take for what it is worth. There are several important parts to any poll, particularly the the political type. First, who is the sponsoring organization or conductor of the poll. For instance, can you trust a poll conducted by Quebec nationalists saying that 95% of all Quebecois are in favor of seperation. Probably not. However, if the Toronto Sun sponsors a poll being conducted by an independent firm saying that 95% of Quebecois support seperation then get ready to add another country to NATO. The Second important thing to look at is what was the sampling size and where is the location of those polled. Generally, the larger a sampling size, the more likely it is to be accurate. The more diversity in location, the more representational it will be as well. For example, a poll of 10 of your neighbors does not tell you what the sentiments of an entire city are. However, a poll of 100 residents in all 5 neighborhoods in a city would. Similarly polling only one province would not tell you what all of Canada feels about national questions. My thinking as that as far as national polling goes in Canada, it is even less relevent than in the U.S. because of the nature of the parlimentary system. Since the P.M. is chosen based on the number of P.M elected from their party, it would seem to me that individual district polls would be more important. In the States, a statewide poll is comparative in importance, but not size. As far as your question about the fluctuation goes, I would not look at it from poll to poll, but rather from month to month and always look at the same poll, such as from the same sponsor and firm. Hope this helps.
by Serg 09:02:14 AM 2013.06.30 |
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