Where are the approval ratings Voting stations at

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How are polls conducted? Typically, the customer contacts the polling organization and places an order for a poll, specifying what questions are to be asked, when the poll will be conducted, how many people will be interviewed, and how the results will be presented. The pollster then hires a call center to call the agreed upon number of people and, ask them the questions. Some call centers use computers to make the calls and ask the questions, with the respondent keying in the answers. Usually, the interview begins with easy questions to assure the respondent that he or she is not going to be embarrassed. For example: "I am going to read you the names of some well-known political figures. For each one, please tell me if you have a favorable, neutral, or unfavorable opinion of that person." Then the names of well-known figures such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, etc. are read. The answers are typed into a computer as they are received. When each interviewer has the requisite number of valid interviews, he or she transmits the results to the pollster. The pollster then weights the various demographic categories to make sure there are enough men, enough retirees, enough Democrats, enough Catholics, enough college graduates, and so on. The pollster prepares a final report, breaking down the results by age, gender, income, education, political party, and other ways. The more people called, the more accurate the poll, but the more expensive it is. For state polls, 500-1000 valid interviews are typical (but it may require calling 10 times these numbers to get 500-1000 valid interviews). How does the pollster decide who to call? All polls are based on the idea of a random sample. Two methods are used to get the sample. The first is called RDD (Random Digit Dialing) in which the pollster carefully chooses an area code and prefix (together, the first six digits of a telephone number) and then picks the next four digits at random. Due to the way the telephone system is organized, people with the same area code and next three digits generally live close together, although this property is changing. This method generates a good random sample since it hits all in the selected area with equal probability, including unlisted numbers. Unfortunately, it also hits business phones, fax machines, and modems. The second method takes telephone numbers from a telephone book or list and uses them, or sometimes randomizes the final digit to hit unlisted numbers. Do pollsters call cell phones? Yes if they are dialing the numbers manually; No if a computer is doing the dialing. This fact means that people who have only a cell phone and no land line will be systematically excluded from polls with automatic dialing. Since cell-only people tend to be mostly young people, the pollsters intentionally overweight the 18-30 year olds to compensate for this effect, but as more people drop their landlines, it is becoming a serious issue. Here is a report on the issue. Do pollsters call VoIP phones? Increasingly many people have phone service over cable or on Skype. Calling them is a bit tricky because customers can often choose any area code they want. Someone living in Seattle can choose a Florida area code so his mother can call him as a local call. When a pollster calls someone with a Florida area code and gets someone in Washington, the accuracy of the poll is not improved. Do pollsters miss any other large groups besides cell users? Yes. They never, ever poll the 7 million Americans who live overseas (roughly the population of Virginia) even though all of them over 18 are eligible to vote in the state they previously lived in. These people are soldiers, teachers, missionaries, students, businessmen, and spouses of foreign nationals, to name just a few categories. Since they are such a heterogeneous group, they are hard to correct for.

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