What does “Polls Say” in an Election even mean? How are they updated? No one has ever asked me my thoughts. Who are they asking and who is actually answering?
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Polling is an art and a science. The idea is to ask a limited number if people and be able to *reliably* use that to predict how the population will act.
so that means kniw a great deal about the people who are being polled: age, sex, if they are married, level of education, what they do for a job, income level, where they live, etc etc etc.
and then have an accurate break down of the population – how many people their are, how many are male/female, income levels, race, ethnicity, job, religion, car they drive, etc etc etc (the more the merrier). So the pollsters kniw that 48% of Americans are male, 52% are female, what percentage is what age, how much they make, their education levels etc etc etc,
so when someone is polled the pollster also asks for some of this demographic information (or has already gotten it from other sources) – the the answer from the polled person becomes – white, make, age 37, income 60,000, advertising rep, BS in computer science, lives in NYS. – PERSON POLLED WILL VOTE STRAIGHT LINE DEMOCRAT IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS.
wash rinse repeat for – white male, age 67, retired, etc etc etc VOTE TRUMP NATIONAL, VOTE DEMOCRAT LOCAL
each of these answers are plugged into the demographic information and used to extrapolate how the population is going to vote. The demographic information is used to limit the predictions from the peopled polled only to people have some kind of overlap with the person polled.
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