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

As they said if the sample set is a good mixture then it can be indicative of the overall population mindset. Problem being most polls nowadays have their result in mind before they start so they find people that are more inclined to go how they want to poll. Lots of science is down this way now. It used to be “here’s money do science and let me know what you came up with” now it’s usually “here’s money prove that xxx is true” most are inclined to make the result as desired just to secure extra funding for other projects.