[StAntKnee]

Thanks for the insight.

Still, I’d like to know how much it’s over-sampled, wouldn’t you?

The fact that I don’t see the demographics on the sample, as I do on most other surveys reports, makes me suspicious.

The cynicism in me, I suppose.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

You're wise to be skeptical of the methods used in polling. There are many, many ways to load a poll (as in “loaded dice”).

One important thing in a statistical survey is the margin of error — this is usually reported along with the averages. The more people you survey, the smaller the margin of error.

If you want to report on differences between African American opinions, and those of the general population; you have to have to have enough African Americans in the sample to get an acceptable margin of error. Oversampling is, by far, the most economical and efficient approach.

If you over-sample a group, you're supposed to weight their responses, to neutralize the oversampling. E.g. over-sample by a factor of 5, weight each response by a factor of 1/5. If the oversampling weren't neutralized in the analysis — that would be a very serious error.