It’s Time for Pollsters to Report Margins of Error More Honestly

… We’ve all read the disclaimers such as “The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.” My research has found that such statements influence the level of trust readers place in a poll’s results.

Unfortunately, their trust is misplaced. A dirty secret of the polling business is that reported margins of error are essentially a myth. CONT.

Robert A. Peterson (McCombs School of Business, U. of Texas at Austin), Texas Perspectives