How reliable is Survey USA?

[justice1]

A few people kept pointing out Nebraska was still above 50%, which I didn't understand, since most people I know despise him.

Since the beginning of the year, blacks have been under represented,usually they weren't even surveyed. The one month they were, 70% disapproved of Bush's job performance.

Bush scored well with people with Graduate, and College degrees. In the surveys they were over represented by as much as 2-3 times their actual demographic.

People without any college gave Bush lower marks, and were also under represented.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I just did an informal survey of people

living in this house. Two of use have post-graduate degrees, the other some college. All of us gave Bush the worst possible rating.

[existentialist]

2. Survey USA reliability

I think Survey USA varies from state to state in the quality of their polls because they work through affiliation with local media.

Also, I think their samples are relatively small which results in a relatively larger margin of error.

Still, over all I think there polls have some measure of credibility, and I have to like the trends.

[bluestateguy]

3. They poll 600 people per state

For a 95% confidence interval that is a margin of error of about 4.1%. But that's for the whole sample.

If there are say, 10% black people in a state, then you have a sub-sample of about 60 people, and a much higher margin of error for the measurment of black respondenrs.

[Warpy]

4. It all depends on when they did the poll

Is it a recent one?

[Ecumenist]

5. It isn't... At least I don't trust their poll results