… 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