the.com/poll
A snapshot of opinion that everyone treats as a weather forecast for the future.
means A survey of people's opinions or votes, used to estimate what a larger group thinks or will do.
from From Middle English 'polle,' meaning the top of the head — literally your skull. Early vote-counting worked by tallying heads: each person's 'poll' got counted, one head, one vote. That's also why 'poll tax' is a tax per head, and why you still 'head count' a crowd today. The word drifted from skulls to surveys because both involve counting individual people one by one.
- margin of error
- the part everyone ignores in headlines
- sample size
- 1000 people deciding how 300 million feel
- etymology
- old word for the top of your head, literally
- accuracy
- best right before an election, worst right after