Public Opinion Polls and Their Use in the United States

Public Opinion Polls In today's society, public opinion polls are used to defend and argue against almost every imaginable issue. They are used to determine who is the leading candidate in elections, if the people support those they do elect, if movies, television and other media products are any good, or at least desirable and they determine what kind of products we as consumers want to purchase. The only problem with these polls, is that …

…as a whole, but rather the views of different sectors of the general public. Bibliography Gallup, George H. Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1996. Houston: Scholarly Resource, Inc. 1997. Young, Michael L. Dictionary of Polling: The Language of Contemporary Research. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1992. Herbest, Susan. Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. Asher, Herbert. Polling and The Public: What Every Citizen Should Know. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1998.