Talk:Straw poll

message: This page has existed for years, yet it's still a stub. Could someone explain how the Iowa straw polls work? Anyone else got anything to add? 71.178.1.32 03:39, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See the Ames Straw Poll article. —Lowellian (reply) 01:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Observations (and I've heard Cox speak in person and respect his intentions and sentiments): (1) Straw polls generally, but not always, take ordinary steps to prevent duplicate voting; when they don't (as is usually the case online), they should not be called straw polls in my opinion. General elections also take strong steps to prevent duplicate voting, but cannot prevent all attempts to obtain multiple voter registration cards. So duplicate voting cannot be perfectly enforced, it can only be reasonably prevented and morally deprecated. (2) You didn't at any point allege that any person physically submitted multiple votes in any straw poll, just that persons bought multiple tickets in excess of attendance. By contrast, I know of a "poll" in Olathe, KS, where multiple voting was explicitly permitted. I understand a Fredhead won by purchasing 50 Thompson votes for $1 each, without the benefit of 49 like-minded friends; only about 100 total votes were purchased in the whole poll. (3) Note that Paul's campaign generally doesn't buy these tickets: as you admit, his supporters do. If a campaign pays $50 a ticket, and has warm-bodied voters and have not prevented them from voting against their own sponsors, the fact that the campaign has this money and is willing to spend it on this result and can find the voters is, in fact, significant and exactly what straw polls measure. Even more significant if supporters spend $3800 to win a straw poll: when have you ever heard of that kind of grassroots excitement? (4) By the way, Romney, who is owed $17 million by his campaign, paid over $2000 per vote at the Iowa Straw Poll, partly because a myriad of $35 tickets went unvoted, and because of busing and advertising. That is, the same money wins a whole poll in Paul supporters' hands, but buys exactly two votes in Romney's hands. (5) Finally, I agree that most straw polls are not well-documented and this certainly hampers reporting and collation. But there is no warrant for completely ignoring results that testify to some campaign or supporter persistence and passion. John J. Bulten 20:02, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Iowa Straw Poll

message: During the Papal election, there are no straw polls.  Once in the conclave all votes are binding.  Rather, straw, wet or dry, was burned along with the ballot papers, to produce black (no Pope) or white smoke (a Pope has been elected) to indicate the result of that round of voting.  Straw has now apparently been replaced by chemicals.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.214.147.34 (talk) 02:30, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ecclesiastical Use 

message: “Straw polls provide important interactive dialogue”.  Is there any kind of dialogue other than an interactive one? Paul Magnussen (talk) 03:43, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interactive Dialogues 

message: Wasn't there at one time a BBC Radio Four programme called "Straw Poll", which was put on at the same time as Any Questions?
in the days when Any Questions took a summer break? If any one remember, and considers it notable enough to have an article in Wikipedia, it could get an article in Wikipedia, and there could then be a disambiguation tag at the top of the page (or a tag saying "For the radio programme, see..." and then a link to the article). ACEOREVIVED (talk) 15:48, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Radio programme called "Straw Poll"

message: "A margin of error is intrinsic in any subset polling method, and is a mathematical function of the difference in size between the subset and the larger population;" 
The margin of error includes several sources of error, one of which is sampling error. The sampling error is related to the sample size n and the population size N through the finite population correction (fpc), which is a factor of (1 - n/N). There is no (n - N) term in the sampling error and it is not generally present in other sources of error. 
"sampling error is constant across different poll methods with the same sample sizes."
No. In general, there's no reason for it to be anywhere close.
Blaise (talk) 16:50, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statistical errors