[MR] Pollings in general

[Peters, Rise J.]

Richard, Jeff really, said:  "OK, on the other side of the coin, statistical treatment of small sample surveys
can determine the reliability of the results drawn from the sample.  It's
counter-intuitive, in fact, how little it takes to reliably represent a large
population accurately."

My recollection, from the long ago days when I knew something about this subject, is that drawing conclusions from small samples leads to reliable results if you can assume that your sample is random.  Here, it's pretty clear that the sample isn't random.  Rather, there's been self-selection by those who (a) care about the outcome, (b) believe that their response will matter, and (c) have the wherewithal (time, form, whatever it took) to respond.

In the absence of a random sampling technique, generalizing from a small response becomes much iffier (that's a technical term).

=Rise, who did this stuff in a former life...