For clarification, the Gallup Organization ensures that the poll sample is identified through a truly random process. This means it's possible to oversample one portion of the population. In order to correct for this, the responses are matched and balanced against the U.S. Census population parameters. That balancing process ensures that the sample reflects the U.S. population. Of course, in all polling, there remains a sampling error, in our case, +/-3%, standard for a national sample.
Poll (bullet 2):
"Americans support an increased use of federal funds to maintain local public schools."
Translation:
"Americans believe there is a free lunch being served in Washington."
No news there. It would be news if people identified the lack of funding for local schools (bullet 4) as being a direct result of consistently voting to cut taxes or against candidates identified as being "pro tax".
Tax that guy behind the tree.
Dear Mr. Bushaw,
You are right that the last page describes in general the reweighting of the final interviews. But the specifics of weighting matter, and they are not described on the last page. In addition, the oversampling of parents of school-age children is not described (how many of the 1002 interviews were with parents of public-school students?), and depending on the size of individual cells, the underrepresentation in the sample may skew the results. What worried me about the sampling was the large jumps between 2006 and 2007 and then back again, greater than the MoE.
Commenting by HaloScan
