As everyone knows CNN declared that Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan won the debate on Thursday.
“The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International, with 381 registered voters nationwide who watched the debate questioned by telephone. All interviews were conducted after the end of the debate. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus five percentage points.”
Wait a second, 381 people in the focus group? The state Transportation Department where I am currently employed completed a customer satisfaction survey one year ago using this same method…random sampling. It’s a really complicated process figuring out how many people need to be interviewed to be considered a representative sample of the entire group, and it confuses me a bit. But I am pretty sure the DOT’s customer groups were three times the size for a population of what…less than a million? Now, let’s think about it, how many millions of people watched the debate? So wouldn’t you think you would need a little more than 381 people to represent those viewers. Shame on you CNN for basing a headline on a skewed, faulty, flawed, and completely ammature poll. Ammatures!
