Public Opinion: 2016 Presidential Poll
In my opinion, I do feel that the 2016 Presidential Poll does not accurately capture the opinion of the public. This is because the 2016 presidential election was a vibrant event for public polling. The prior elections surveys powered prestigious projections that Hillary Clinton winning likelihood was nearly 90 out of a hundred while approximations fluctuated from 71 up to 99 percent. However, when President Donald Trump was on 9th November declared the winner it came as a foreseen shock even to the pollsters (Chen, et al 1). There was and there is still a universally accepted consensus that the political polls failed (Chen, et al 1). Accurate polls predict a small marginal difference which might either be a plus or minus which was not the case for the 2016 polls whose sampling error was rather unrealistic.
The polls failed to represent the opinions of the general public in a reliable and accurate way given that the sampling error rate was misleading because it was typically larger than standard. The United States public opinion polls appear to have become American perception norm. Generally, the polls are grounded on numerous set of interviews guided by written questions which are utilized to determine what the public believe, their feeling towards political candidates or their reactions. The polls failed to account for the larger public portion thus relying on opinions on a small portion and did not account for any kind of changes within the campaign period (NYT 1). The state’s absolute error was about 5.1 which is deemed to be the largest error since 2000 (Chen, et al 1). The overall error was the guard of the overstated Clinton’s support while underestimating Trump’s influence which might have been driven by nonresponse partiality.
Work Cited
Chen Junjie, Engelhardt Andrew, Lau Arnold, Trussler Marc, and Patricio Pena Ibarra. (n.d). an evaluation of 2016 Election Polls in the U.S. Retrieved from http://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/Reports/An-Evaluation-of-2016-Election-Polls-in-the-U-S.aspx
NYT. Latest Election Polls, 2016. November 8, 2016. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/polls.html
