Opinion Polls

An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals. Here is an example of a poll on Obama. More than two-thirds of Americans see President Obama as a different kind of politician, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. Asked what sets him apart from other politicians, forty percent cite Mr. Obama’s governing style. Nine percent cite his policies, while 13 percent say it's both his style and his policies. Six percent cite another reason. One in four Americans overall, meanwhile, say Mr. Obama is not different from other politicians. Republicans are more likely to view the president as a typical politician – 44 percent say he is typical, compared to just 9 percent of Democrats. Nine in ten Democrats see Mr. Obama as a different kind of politician. While majorities of both whites and blacks say Mr. Obama is a different kind of politician, whites are more than twice as likely as blacks to describe the president as a typical politician. This poll was conducted among a random sample of 973 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone April 22-26, 2009. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher. An over sample of African Americans was interviewed for a total of 212 interviews with African Americans. The results were then weighted in proportion to the racial composition of the adult population in the U.S. Census. The margin of error for the sample of African Americans is seven percentage points. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.