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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With a large sample size like 1000, you get a pretty good representation of the average without needing a larger sample size. Pretend you have a coin, and do not know what the odds of getting heads would be. Flip once, you get heads. That might imply 100% of the time. Flip 3 more times, get tails on those, now maybe heads is o ly 25% likely. Flip the coin 1000 times and you will see you will be close to 50/50, and doing another 10,000 won’t change that result, except maybe to push it closer to 50/50.
It would also depend on the poll, because asking 1000 people a question in one location could give a different result than another, so the sample group would need to consist of the right group depending on the question.
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