A Dispatch computer randomly chose who would receive ballots, which were modeled as closely as possible after the state's official ballot layout. Voters receiving the ballots were asked to describe themselves by their party affiliation, age, sex, race, education, income, religion, union membership and voting record for president in 1996 and governor in 1998. Ballots of different colors were sent to various regions of the state so The Dispatch could ensure that each area was represented in proportion to its voting strength. The standard margin of sampling error in a poll of the size conducted by The Dispatch is plus or minus 2 percentage points in 95 out of 100 cases. This means that if the poll were conducted 100 times, in 95 cases, the result would not vary by more than 2 percentage points from the result that would be obtained if all registered voters in Ohio were polled and responded.
Error margins are greater for poll subsamples.
Like all polls, the Dispatch Poll is subject to possible error other than sampling error. Other sources of error can be unintentional bias in the wording of questions, data-entry error or nonresponse bias. Nonresponse bias means those who responded might not reflect the views of those who did not participate. The response rate was 24 percent. The results were adjusted slightly to compensate for demographic differences between poll respondents and Ohio electorate members.