Suppose we have a politician we'll call candidate zero. zero has no genuine political opinion on any topic; their only concern is to get elected to a federal position. to do this they desperately need to know how the american voting population feels about certain hot button issues. for this example, we'll use marriage equality. now suppose zero hires 3 polling firms, firm a, firm b, and firm c, to inform zero of what stance he should take on the issue of marriage equality. firm a sends their pollsters to churches in rural mississippi to collect their sample data. firm b sends their pollsters into the castro neighborhood in san francisco to collect their sample data. firm c collects their sample data through random selection of registered american voters. remember, candidate zero has no position on this issue, they only want to pander to the majority, i. e. they only want to get elected.
1. identify the population of interest for this scenario.
2. identify any issues that might be problematic with the methodology employed by each firm. be specific and be mindful of the types of biases in data collection you’ve encountered in the readings.
3. draw a connection between the data collected by firm a and firm b. what is it about these two data sets that make them similar?
4. explain how polling might a candidate "evolve" on an issue.