National polls are a tool used to gather opinions on a certain subject from a particular sample of people representing the same population. The primary goal of such polls is to get an image of an overall nationwide opinion judging by the answers given in the poll. Thereby, population in such polls is usually people representing the same nation or the people living in the same country. For example, polls related to political election and similar matters are associated with general adult population of the country where election is taking place – in other words, the voters (Gelman, 2021). It means that whoever creates such polls is interested in receiving an opinion of people who want to and can vote. That information can be used for predicting, for instance, which person will take a particular political post. The sample in this case would be a specific group of voters that had expressed their wish to participate in such a poll. The differences between sample and population and the correlated potential errors are the main challenge faced by any poll (Gelman, 2021). A poll results can be different for two samples of the same population.
There is an exemplifying poll related to the upcoming election day for the Congress. The poll is a generic ballot aimed to identify whether American voters want to see democrats of republicans in Congress (FiveThirtyEight, 2022). In this case, the poll’s population is the American citizens, and the poll’s sample is people who gave their opinion to the organization conducting the poll, namely FiveThirtyEight. The upcoming election will happen on November 8, 2022, determining which politicians will take seats in Congress this time (FiveThirtyEight, 2022). However, people can already use the national poll to see how many American citizens support democrats, and who is on the republicans’ side.
References
FiveThirtyEight. (2022). Do voters want democrats or republicans in Congress?
Gelman, A. (2021). Failure and Success in Political Polling and Election Forecasting. Statistics and Public Policy, 8(1), 67-72.