A Dispatch computer randomly chose who would receive the surveys, which were modeled after the official ballot layout. Voters receiving the ballots were asked to describe themselves by partyaffiliation, age, sex, race, education, income, religion, union membership andhow they voted for president in 1996 and governor in 1998. Ballots of different colors were sent to various regions of the city so The Dispatch could ensure that all areas were represented in proportion to their actualvoting strength. The standard margin of sampling error in a poll of this size is plus or minus 2 percentage points in 95 out of 100 cases. That means that if a poll is conducted 100 times, in 95 cases the result will not vary by more than 2 percentage points from the result that would be obtained if all Columbus registered voters were polled and responded.
Error margins are greater for poll subsamples.
Other potential sources of error include unintentional bias in the wording of questions, data-entry error or nonresponse bias. Nonresponse bias means those who responded might not necessarily reflect the views of those who did not participate. The response rate in this poll was 19 percent. The poll was designed, conducted and financed by The Dispatch.