Chapter 2.2, Problem 22E

The chairman of a California ballot initiative campaign to add “none of the above” to the list of ballot options in all candidate races was quite critical of a Field poll that showed his measure trailing by 10 percentage points. The poll was based on a random sample of 1000 registered voters in California. He is quoted by the Associated Press (January 30, 2000) as saying, “Field’s sample in that poll equates to one out of 17,505 voters,” and he added that this was so dishonest that Field should get out of the polling business! If you worked on the Field poll, how would you respond to this criticism? (Hint: See discussion of sample size on page 39.)