Originally posted by Langolier
509 people might not represent the majority's opinion, but statistically there is a good chance that their sentiment is proportional to the whole's; that's how polls work. 10% might not seem like a lot until you consider how large a number you are dealing with. If there are only 2 million muslims in the UK then that is still some 200,000 muslims willing to shelter terrorists. That's a scary number.
That depends ... what 500 people did they call ... was it random? Were did they git the list of 500? If I were to call 500 people in Georgia ... 500 people in San Francisco ... or 500 people in New York city ... I could generate 3 different polls with the same questions that would most definitely have very different results. To push that as valid data is misleading.
There's also the matter of error accountability ... according to polling statistics I found it is generally accepted there is a 3% error margin rate based on 500 survey members. So that means somewhere between 7-13% of the population would "turn a blind eye" (70,000 to 130,000) and 83-89% would notify police of suspicious activity/behavior (830,000 to 890,000) ... that's a pretty wide ranging variable.
Polling 101
I agree almost any news poll or political poll is worthless. I don't think a sample of 500 would accurately represent the 125,000 people in my town versus an entire 1 million population spread across an entire region.
I still say even if we take this poll as proper/valid and a good representation of the muslim community ... why was the news report written from a negative perspective?
Why not write a headline "Over 860,000 Muslims Would Notify Police of a Possible Terrorist". Instead the headline says "1 in 10 Muslims Ignore Terror". Why choose to focus on what the poll showed to be the minority of the polled population?
