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My neighbor's kid showed me a chart that made me rethink polling numbers
Was over at my neighbor's house last weekend and his 16-year-old daughter was working on a school project about polling accuracy. She pulled up a scatter plot of 2020 election polls versus actual results and pointed out how the error margin was way bigger than what news outlets reported. Said most polls only sample 1,000 people out of 160 million voters and act like it's gospel. I asked her why it mattered and she just said "because 3% error means 5 million people could be wrong." Hit different hearing it from a kid. Anyone else ever dig into the actual sample sizes behind those viral polls they keep posting?
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mason_reed473h ago
That 3% margin claim really stuck with me too, but did the chart show how many of those polls had even wider error bars in actual local races? Would be interesting to see if the problem is worse with national polls versus state level ones.
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