• LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    TL;DR: A poll in Minnesota of 635 likely voters showed her lead after the DNC went from 10 to 5 percent. And it also has a margin of error of ±4.5 percent. So in other words, this is a tiny ass poll with a margin of error almost the exact same size as the supposed lead being halved. I’m not saying it’s not possible, but with such a small poll, I don’t know how accurate this.

    • aalvare2@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      If I understand margin of error correctly, then what this means is that the “true” lead that harris had over trump at the time of this poll has a 95% chance of being somewhere between +(5+4.5) and +(5-4.5).

      So according to just this poll, there’s a 95% that Harris’ lead in Minnesota is between 9.5% and 0.5%, so somewhere between “what the polling was nearly already saying” and “almost neck and neck”.

      And that’s not even taking any of the other polling into consideration…

      TL;DR yeah, this poll isn’t very useful.

    • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      635 is not that small. Regular polling should show us a good idea of how play stands.

      • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Considering there are polls that have 2000 or more people and those are generally considered more reliable, 635 is pretty small. It might not be small in a gym, but it’s smaller than my graduating high school class. So it’s less reliable as such.