A Dispatch computer randomly chose who would receive ballots, modeled as closely as possible after the state's official ballot. Voters receiving the ballots were asked to describe themselves by party affiliation, age, sex, race, education, income, religion, union membership and for whom they voted 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 actual 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 a poll is conducted 100 times, in 95 cases a result will 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 necessarily reflect the views of those who did not participate. The response rate was 19 percent for the statewide poll and 23 percent for the congressional poll. The results were adjusted slightly to compensate for demographic differences between poll respondents and the Ohio electorate as a whole.