For this assignment, you’ll be pulling together what we have learned so far: governments need legitimacy to run, politicians run for office and need to know what the public thinks, and polls can be scientific or non-scientific.
Prompt:
Find a poll in a news article or from a major polling agency and evaluate whether it is a good poll or not, using the criteria of what we expect to see in a scientific poll.
Please complete your short essay with these 6 steps:
1. find a poll relating to a candidate for office, an issue important to you or someone you know, or an issue important in California.
2. paste the article or the details of the poll in its entirety into your post and include a citation for the article/poll (APA, MLA, or Chicago are all fine). If you use a newspaper, it needs to be from a known publisher or agency (for example, CNN, CSPAN, Fox, Los Angeles Times, The Mercury News, The Sacramento Bee, The Orange County Register, San Francisco Chronicle, The Fresno Bee, Investor’s Business Daily, The San Diego Union-Tribune, La Opinión, The Press-Enterprise, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, The Daily Breeze, The Modesto Bee, The Press Democrat, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, The Tribune, Santa Barbara News-Press) or a wire service (A.P., Reuters). If you use a polling agency, it must be one that is recognized: Rasmussen, Zogby, Gallup, Marist, Quinnipiac, Ipsos, YouGov, Harris, Pew, etc. If you’re not sure, please email me to check. If the poll doesn’t paste well, you may upload a screenshot or picture of the poll. Just be sure to upload the picture into the thread so that it is visible.
3. after the article, hit three asterisks (***) to show your teammates where the article/poll ends and your answer begins.
4. explain how you know this poll is scientific or not. Get specific using the materials from class; you must cite the book or lecture specifically, with examples.
5. explain why the poll is important to you and why the government, politicians, or you benefit from knowing what others think.
6. Proof read a final time over your work and your citations.
This assignment averages around 15 to 20 sentences, depending upon your writing style.