The way that questions are asked, and even who asks them, also influences survey results. Middle-aged women are highly sought after by polling firms because they are perceived to be nonthreatening as interviewers. On the other hand, if you wanted to survey Wisconsin anglers, you would probably get more accurate results by employing male interviewers. As a general rule, the bigger the sample, the better. But perversely, once a sample gets to 1,500 or 2,000 in size, it's big enough to reflect the entire U.S. population fairly accurately.
Sample size can mean little without a good proportion of that sample responding.
You could have a perfectly drawn random sample, but if you only get in touch with 20 percent of the people on that list, it will be difficult to argue that this represents the target population. A response rate below 50 percent calls into question the accuracy of a survey's findings, in my view. You'll see very little discussion of response rates in poll stories, particularly for fast-turnaround, overnight elections polls. One likely scenario is that the response rates are low, something that should cause you to question the survey. Let's say that researchers get the results of a statewide survey and find that the response rate for certain subsets of their sample is low.