I’ve noticed most U.S. polls query around 1,000 people and sometimes even less. Somehow that qualifies for headlines like “Americans say…” or “Most Americans…” How is it acceptable that 0.0002% of the population is accepted as representative?
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**ELI5:** It’s like guessing what’s in a giant jar of jellybeans by looking at just a small handful. If you pick your handful carefully to get all the different colors in there, you can make a pretty good guess about all the jellybeans in the jar. When polls ask questions to 1,000 people from all over the place and with different backgrounds, it’s like getting a handful that tells us what millions of people might think.
**Adult Answer:** Surveys with about 1,000 respondents can accurately reflect the views of the entire U.S. population due to strategic sampling and statistical principles. By choosing a sample that represents the population’s diversity (age, race, gender, geography), researchers can extrapolate the findings to the broader public. This method is supported by the central limit theorem, which indicates that the average of sample estimates will approximate the population average as the sample size increases, making the survey results a reliable microcosm of national opinion. This approach is scientifically validated and includes a margin of error to account for variability, ensuring the conclusions drawn from these samples are statistically sound.
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