The next time you come across a poll and are wondering what to make of it, just follow these steps.
or confidence interval — it’ll look something like “± 3 points.” This reflects that polls can’t be exact, but they do promise to be within a certain number of percentage points almost all of the time . In practical terms, that means that if a poll puts President Trump’s
at 42 percent with a 3-point margin of error, his approval rating could be anything from 39 percent to 45 percent. Note that, in head-to-head polls, the margin of error applies tocandidate’s vote share, so if the same poll gave Trump 46 percent and gave former Vice President Joe Biden 51 percent, Trump could actually be leading 49 percent to 48 percent.
” tend to be about 4 or 5 percentage points too favorable to their sponsor, so don’t take them at face value. Beskeptical of internal polls that don’t release full methodological details, like the name of the pollster or the dates of the poll. Similarly, partisan media outlets may exaggerate their side’s standing by extensively covering good polls for their candidate while ignoring bad ones.
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