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NewsPress.com Reports: The spate of Florida Republican presidential primary polls released over the past two days have consistently shown Mitt Romney with an 8-9 point lead over Newt Gingrich. The lone exception is the Dixie Strategies/The News-Press/First Coast News poll.
Our poll has Gingrich leading Romney by an eyelash — 35.46 percent to 35.08.
Could our poll be right and all the others wrong? Maybe.
In polling terminology, our poll is what’s called an outlier (for a set of numerical data, any value that is markedly smaller or larger than other values).
However, there is one factor that works in our favor. The News-Press poll’s sample size (2,567 likely voters) is three to four times larger than that of other pollsters and thus our poll has a very small margin of error (1.93 percent) with a confidence level of 95 percent.
In other words, the confidence interval associated with the sample in our poll is such that 95 percent of the time results will be within 1.93 percent of the “true values.” True values refer to the results obtained if it were possible to interview every “likely” voter in the state.
Most pollsters don’t interview large sample sizes because of the time and cost involved. Therefore, they have a larger margin of error, usually in the 4-5 percentage range.
In layman’s terms, the more people you talk to the less likely you’re going to be wrong.
Our poll shows a tossup and Romney could be leading, when you factor in the margin of error of 1.93 percent. Romney’s support could be as high as 37.01 percent and Gingrich’s as low as 33.53 percent.
Conversely, the other polls could be overvaluing Romney’s percentage and undervaluing Gingrich’s, within their respective margins of error.
So who’s right? We will find out Tuesday night.
