How to conduct a Political Poll Essay

Submitted By Xblslave1
Words: 566
Pages: 3

I would begin my political poll by taking the two presidential candidates and analyzing their stance on various issues including civil rights, jobs and economy, education, and natural resources. I would further try to determine which specific audiences or demographics would agree or disagree with each respective candidate on their opinions. Since it would be immensely difficult to survey everyone in the country, I would instead opt for surveying the population of a large metropolitan area where diversity is expected, for example, Phoenix. I would take the population of Phoenix and, using stratified sampling, divide it into several relevant categories and subcategories. The first strata would divide the population first by gender, second by age, third by ethnicity, and finally by educational/occupational/financial background. After dividing the population, I would number the individuals within each sub-strata, and use a random number generator to decide which members of each sub-strata I survey. This way I would be able to draw samples from the "target audiences" of certain candidates, and determine if the audience supporting one candidate outweighs the audience supporting another.I could also take my survey to the online world, paying small fees to post it on popular websites, or simply use social media networks such as tumblr, twitter, or facebook. The online survey would include questions on the survey-takers age, gender, ethnicity, and occupational background so as to group them into strata before they answer which candidate they would rather vote for. In both methods of administering the survey, I could add an additional question on why the survey-taker supports or doesn't support a candidate, and what issues they agree or disagree with that candidate on. With the data collected from the sample, I could gather information on how many individuals would belong to each sub-strata nationwide, and thus predict which target audiences has a larger national following. From this I could determine which candidate would also have a larger national following. The use of stratified sampling would be particularly helpful for a survey like this, because it would allow me to calculate the diversity of the sample, and therefore, the diversity of the population. Since a president needs to have goals and policies that would benefit the diversity of the American