Are Gallup polls really reliable?
Well, it has been used consistently by the media, and I think people generally believe its polls. Of course, it has had some mistakes in the past: “Gallup polls are usually accurate in predicting the correct outcome of the current United States presidential election. A notable exception is the 1948 Thomas Dewey-Harry S. Truman election, where nearly all pollsters predicted a Dewey victory.
Gallup has obvious mistakes in reporting its results. It was Gallup that reported the average American family has 2.5 children. Obvious mistake…how do you have .5 of a child. Take poll results for what they are…a sample of a population, sometimes sizeable and random, sometimes not… and apply common sense along with personal research. Perhaps Gallup should have reported the median family size instead of average.
