Poll
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by StevenM (talk | contribs) at 19:32, October 22, 2007. It may differ significantly from current revision.
A poll is a survey of a group of people, often the public, about an issue in politics, religion, business or other subject matter.
There are many different ways to conduct a poll. Straw polls are very common on the Internet, like when they ask if you like Pepsi or Coca-Cola better. These are very unreliable because, like in phone-in polls, people can vote as many times as they feel like.
Random sampling is a method which is much more reliable because a large number of radomly chosen people each vote once on pertinint issues. Ther is always a magin of error, like + or - 5%, because no poll is entirely accurate.
Exit polls are controversial