American Public Opinion - Essay Example

The implication of this is that the candidates are made to believe that, the opinion of the sample represents the interests of the entire population. This is actually a potential flaw of the public opinion poll system as the people selected for the polls might have an entirely different view on the interests of the rest of the public (Erikson & Kent, 2000). Thus, the representation of a few individuals is not in any way a perfect representation of the opinion of the public as the case may be.

Another potential flaw of the public opinion polls that could cause inaccuracies is when some questions that have been asked in previous polls are raised and the statisticians believe that, these questions would produce similar answers or responses like the previous ones (Lippmann, 1997). The fact remains that, things that hold ground last year would not hold ground this year due to certain factors. The earlier the potential flaws of the public opinion polls are tackled, the sooner the problems of inaccuracies they cause are solved.