Poll

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 margin of error, like + or - 5%, because no poll is entirely accurate.

Exit polls are controversial, because voting is considered private, and exit polls ask people when they leave the booth how they voted. They usually ask only a fraction of the voters, but they're able to make a pretty good estimate of who's going to win the election.