It's the margin of fraud that worries me.
One term I have heard a bit, both by John Fund on radio, and by Ron Silver on tv, is the 'margin of litigation,' which is an interesting concept, for sure.
I'm with you. I don't understand the MOE.
I'm not so sure about the polls, which are typically among "likely voters" because of the closeness of the percentages and the "fraud factor". I think if the election is close among legitimate voters, there is a real possibility in this election that fraudulent votes may push Kerry ahead.
I hope and pray that I am wrong.
I guess what I mean to say is that if you just look at 1 poll then you should take the margin of error into consideration but when you are looking at many, many polls such as realclearpolitics.com then isn't the margin of error irrelevant?
Each poll is an individual snapshot. You can't just add them together and use that to reduce the margin of error to nothing. Probability and statistics doesn't work that way. It is fashionable to add different polls and average them, but that really isn't statistically valid.
Statistically, I am not convinced the MOE are that accurate. There are way to many assumptions and imperfect sampling that drives the MOE higher than what they quote. Polls are impefect and relying too much on them is an error.
Someone explained a few days ago that the margin of error depended on the sample size, or something like that. They said that if you could poll everyone, there would be no margin of error, and the smaller the sample, the larger the margin of error.
So, if all the polls show Bush ahead, but within the margin of error, you can't assume that Bush is really ahead. However, the odds are certainly in your favor that he is.
But to further complicate matters, each poll uses different methodology, so it's wrong to lump them together and believe you're seeing a consistent result.
The best thing to do is to focus on voting as often as you can, and making sure your dead relatives vote also.
No. Margin of error is a poll's reality check. Suppose a poll says that Bush leads Kerry by 50-45, with a three percent margin of error. What this means is that if the poll was done correctly so that the sample is truely random, then
1. There is a 95% probability that Bush will poll anywhere from 47% to 53%, while Kerry will poll anywhere from 42% to 48%;
2. There is an 80% probability that Bush will poll anywhere from 48% to 52%, while Kerry will poll anywhere from 47% to 43%; and
3. There is a 50% probability that Bush will poll anywhere from 49% to 51%, while Kerry will poll anywhere from 44% to 46%. In other words, a lead is relevant even if it is within a margin of error, but the smaller the margin of error, the more certain you can be that the reported lead is correct or at least close to correct.
Don't forget that most sheepole want to vote for the winner.
with all the assumptions they use, MOE simply can't be determined accurately. The MOE is assuming that the real world is perfect and that the poll takers understand the underlying distribution, which they don't.
But I agree that the fact that most of the polls show Bush ahead is what is important (other than fraud, etc.)
Theoretically, the margin of error does go down as you combine poles, but the problem with polls is not statistical uncertainty, it is a problem with the methods and motives of the pollsters.
Political opinion polls are just guesses with numbers thrown on for support, and all the guessers are looking at the same data and methods, and have the same motives (the same as MSM?).
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
If the polls can be regarded as random samples from a uniform population, then yes, averaging multiple polls could reduce the MOE, although it would never be reduced to 0.0.
For example, if one poll shows B50-K44 while another shows B48-K46, and both polls have an MOE of 3.0, and the same number of voters are questioned for each poll, the average of the polls (B49-K45), should have a combined MOE of roughly 2.1. The average of four polls, each individually having an MOE of 3.0, would give a combined MOE of 1.5; the average of nine such polls would have a combined MOE of 1.0; the average of 16 such polls would have a combined MOE of 0.75...
IMO, given that the numbers that are released have been "adjusted" by criteria selected by the pollster, it is misleading to average polls and combine MOEs. Better numbers might be obtained by averaging the internals from each poll.
Say, for example a poll shows the results of "Bush - 47%, Kerry - 45% and Undecided - 8%" That makes it look close...doesn't it? But take out the undecideds in the same poll and you get the following results "Bush - 51.08% (which is 47/92) and Kerry - 48.92% (which is 45/92)"
Bush would clearly have a majority instead of a plurality...perception is everything and merely winning a plurality adds to the perception of illegitimacy the media would like us to believe.
Note that your poll says nothing about how people would actually vote, or even about people in general. It merely says that of those who will answer the phone between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, the percentage that will say that Bush is less of a weasel than Kerry is likely to be within 3% of the sampled value.
As for your question about combining polls, if two polls are of equal size and MOE, have similar sampling methods, and yield about the same results, the MOE of the average will be about 70% of the MOE of the polls individually. Combine four polls and the MOE of the aggregate will be about half that of the originals.