Bush’s Lead in the Polls at 2000 Presidential Election

Subject: Politics & Government
Pages: 2
Words: 472
Reading time:
2 min

It is a common practice to see many statistical organizations that either handle business-related matters or political matters trying to always present their cases of possible verdicts in current national affairs either for the purposes of predicting the opinions of the people on very sensitive issues or as a prediction to likely or likely winners in upcoming elections-especially in the big races. The gauge-giving organizations use a variety of statistical techniques to turn up their final verdict. But in most of these cases, random sampling is commonly applied because the studies only represent an opinion from a sample of the whole population, of which the company does not choose in advance who to interview. The results are likely going to change from time to time, given the consideration of external events that may influence people to change their minds. This is because the people vote for a certain person or process considering matters that they share a common interest.

The earlier wide gap led by George W. Bush might be attributed to the policies he made concerning the security issues of the people of America and the position of the United States in the world as a great authority. One of the reasons why many people preferred Bush to Gore is that these people thought of the former as a tough leader with the ability to handle the administration efficiently and thereafter stimulate confidence. But later, according to the key campaign, the image of the former was tainted, and thus fewer people upheld their confidence that he was the man they would be proud of as their president. The differences were also a result of other differences like environmental issues, ethical values, gun matters, the rising cost of gasoline, and many more. Additional issues, namely enough understanding to run as president, thoughtful about the needs of most Americans, sharing of the values, crime combat, taxes, and economic management narrowly varied. This explains the difference in the poll results conducted at the given different times.

The sampling variability above could as well be the result of a standard error. Because the surveys were carried out on just about over one thousand Americans, it is highly likely that the results from these studies possess a larger standard error- a larger value of standard deviation. The results of telephone conversation can be affected by the way in which the words in the questions are ordered or phrased to the interviewee or the state of the interviewee, for example, if one is in a hurry, and therefore this method of random sampling poses a risk of flaws because the interviewer can not tell the behavior of the interviewee. The higher the possibilities of these flaws, the higher the marginal error from the outcome.