In the fictional case Republican Stephanie Higgins was running against two-term incumbent, Democrat Webster Fletcher. Once Higgins formally announced she was running for mayor, the polls showed that Fletcher would win with 56% of the vote. However, six months before the election the mayoral race was tightening up. The polls showed that Fletcher continued to have a slight lead of 3%, with a margin of error of +/- 5%. The site raised the question of whether or not Fletcher actually had a lead if the margin of error is +/- 5%. Three months before the election Higgins took a 15% lead in the polls with same margin of error. O

Finally, many factors that can keep a political poll from being a perfect gauge of how all people think, feel or behave is discussed. Many things can go wrong in all testing that uses confidence intervals. Dealing solely with the topic of political polling, most polls are conducted by telephone. If we randomly select names from phone book, we are leaving out individuals who have unlisted or no phone numbers at all. Also, research shows, most phones are answered by older people or women. Only selecting people from these two individual groups leaves out a considerable amount of the population. This causes a bias within the polling. A final and most significant problem with political polling in the United States is that only about 50% of registered voters actually go to the polls and cast a vote. Therefore, only half of the sampled population will matter when taking in account their political views. However, all of the people polled will be measured when estimating political figures.

To begin the site discusses the importance of the random sampling used in political polling. In class we defined a random sample as, everything in the sample stands the same chance of being selected at any point and any time. A great example was given on the site. If a doctor wants to figure out a patients white blood cell count, the doctor doesn't drain out all the patient's blood and count the white blood cells. The doctor randomly samples the patient's blood by pricking their finger and counting the white blood cells

Some common words found in the essay are:
Fletcher Higgins, , margin error, political polling, Stephanie Higgins, white blood, confidence intervals, +/- 5%, sample population, average sample population, fictional mayoral election, margin error +/-, white blood cells, polls answers, error +/- 5%, fictional mayoral, mayoral election, amount population,
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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)