How is it that in the U.S.,surveys of 1,000 are accepted as representative of the entire country?

Question

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?

In: Other

Answer 1

Imagine you have any enormous amount of trail mix. Like, an Olympic sized pool of trail mix. You want to get a rough idea of the constituent snacks and their proportions.

If you scoop out a bucket’s worth, you can count and sort the snacks and find out what’s in the trail mix without examining the entire pool.