Survey facts & stats

Question 1

What's considered the first opinion poll in American history, conducted in 1824?

Accepted Answer

a newspaper straw poll (Jackson vs. Adams). A local newspaper's informal count of voter preferences is often cited as the earliest known opinion poll.

Question 2

To shrink a poll's margin of error down to about 1%, pollsters would need a sample of roughly how many people?

Accepted Answer

about 10,000 people. Cutting the margin of error further requires a much bigger, and much more expensive, sample size.

Question 3

Survey response rates in the US have declined over recent decades to about what level today?

Accepted Answer

about 10%. Fewer people now answer calls or complete surveys, making it harder and costlier to reach a representative sample.

Question 4

In that same 2010 study, response rates had dropped by about how much once a survey reached 20 questions?

Accepted Answer

about 6%. The drop-off from 10 to 20 questions roughly doubled, though it slowed further at even greater lengths.

Survey facts & stats

Going deeper

To shrink a poll's margin of error down to about 1%, pollsters would need a sample of roughly how many people?

Survey response rates in the US have declined over recent decades to about what level today?

Expert level

What's considered the first opinion poll in American history, conducted in 1824?

In that same 2010 study, response rates had dropped by about how much once a survey reached 20 questions?