Imperial Valley press., 1944-01-11
by
Peter
Edison

those years when the poll takers
will bc abroad in the land, sampllne
public opinion and thereby pre-
dieting who is going to be elected
dog catcher where and by now
much, it is worthy of note that the
U. S. Bureau of Census has worked
out some new wrinkles on straw
balloting which have produced
accurate results.
It should be made clear at the
start that the Bureau OF the Cen
sus wasn't and still isn't interested
in political prophesying, the work
of the bureau being limited to strict
ly economic fact-finding. But the
bureau used its new sampling tech
nique so effectively in the recent
survey of consumer requirements
that it has set the private, non
governmental poll takers like Cross
ley, Gallup and Roper to studying
the results to see if their own
methods may not need some reVl-
sion.
The possibility that changes IN
scientific sampling methods would
have to be made from time to time
has Of course been admitted by
the commercial poll taking organl-
cations The old Literary Digest
poll was accurate up to 1896, when
it missed completely. Gallup's Or
ganization was close in 1885 and
1910, but it was off in 1912.
DEFINITE IMPROVEMENT
The new Bureau of Census tech
nique may not represent as much
of a refinement over the Gallup
method as Gallup was an improve
ment over the Literary Digest, but
it is hailed as an improvement.
The poll takers all get their re-
suits by gathering the opinions OF
only a limited number OF people
from 5000 to 10000. In the first
instance, that's approximately one
out of every $4,000 people in the
country. In the latter, it's one for
every 2150. In neither case is 1t
a big sample and that may cX-
plain why you never knew anyone
who was asked for his opinion in a
poll
The trick, of course, is to pick
the right 5000 to 10000 people Tor
the poll 50 as to get representa-
tive cross section of the population,
correctly divided as TO geographic
areas, income levels, soy. occupa-
ton, age groups az JIncr pre-de-
termined classification. This is
known as "purposiVe selection" to
get exactly a true percentage OF
each classification corresponding to
the total number of people of eacn
classification in the entire popula-
ton. Where the Literary Digest
went wrong in 1896, of course, was
that all Of the two million straw
votes it received were cast by peo-
pie whose names were in phone
books or owned automobiles.
"CELL" SYSTEM USED
Bureau of census, for its recent
poll on consumer requirements,
went after the problem on a diff
ferent basis from both these others
First, by running through its 1940
census returns, as corrected by all
the intra-census studies it has
made of population shifts since
then, the bureau was able to select
SO areas or cells" which were stat
istically representative of other SIM
liar areas in the United States. The
determination was made as to To-
cation, population, division of rural
and urban population, type Of
farming, and other occupation. Two
counties representative of each of
these areas were chosen. Then from
the census listing Of households in
all of these counties, providing
perhaps 10 times as many house
holds as it was desired to survey,
a random selection was made OF
every tenth household. The census
enumerators were told to go to
those specific addresses to ask
their questions.
What the census poll came up
with in the end was list Of rough
ly 1900 households out of the 1868
million households in the country,
or approximately one for every
7400 families.
Unfortunately they weren't per-
mitted TO ask their 1900 sample
families who was going to be the
next president