New Year's by the Numbers

As you can tell by the name of this blog, I love numbers. Here are a few interesting facts about New Year's:

• About 40% to 45% of American adults make one or more New Year's resolutions each year. By the second week of January, 25% of people have abandoned their resolutions.
• Most popular resolutions include promises of weight loss, exercise and quitting smoking.
• More vehicles are stolen on New Year's Day than on any other holiday throughout the year.
  
• The Time Square New Year's Eve Ball weighs 11,875-pounds, is 12 feet in diameter and is bedazzled with 2,668 Waterford crystals. That in one big ball!

Did you make a New Year's resolution this year? Have you stuck with it?

4 Questions to ask about a Political Poll

There is no one who is more skeptical of a political poll than a pollster. Pollsters are well aware of the fact that slight variations in question wording or sequencing, events in the news, and sampling can affect the results of a survey.

Yesterday, I attended a political landscape panel. One of the panelists shared data from recent political polls about the upcoming presidential election and the voters perception of the country. Many of the slides were definitely attention grabbers- the majority of respondents felt that the country was on the wrong track, ratings for Congress and the President were in the toilet, and so on and so on.

Anytime that I see results of a political poll, whether it be in a presentation or a news article, I always examine the poll by asking the following questions:

1. How many people were included in the sample? What was the precision rate?
2. Who was being sampled? Registered voters, likely voters? Was the final sample representative of the population or was the data significantly weighted?
   
3. What about early voters, were they included in the projections?
4. Were cell phones included in the sampling frame, or was it strictly landlines?

Most legitimate pollsters who release their data also release their research methodology (or make it available upon request) that answers the above questions. In the absence of this information, my final question is "How accurate are these results, really?".

Exit Polling through the eyes of SNL

A few weeks ago, Saturday Night Live did a sketch on Exit Polling. As someone who works in the polling field, I found this sketch very entertaining. I found myself comparing the interviewer in the video to our interviewing protocols.

Other than the obvious (asking the respondent which candidate they would would most like to see naked), here are some of the things from the video NOT to do when conducting a face to face survey:

1. Ask the gender of the respondent- even if you are unsure.
   
2. Give your opinion on a topic or question.
   
3. Tell the respondent they are doing great- this could influence their responses.
   
4. Ask the respondent on a date, or discussing anything personal.
   

However, as annoying as it can be in some cases (as shown in the video), there was one thing shown in this video that I would recommend:

1. Reading all the response choices before taking an answer (however, categories should make sense).
   

What do you think? Was there anything else in the video that a legitimate interviewer should do?

You can view the sketch here: