Confidence Intervals and Polls

The poll that I selected was taken from http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm, this poll was taken from registered voters nationwide and asked if they would feel safer, less safe, or unsure if more people carried guns. This question is in reference to "open carry" laws that states have for registered gun owners. I live in Elko, NV and it is legal to open carry here, this means that if you legally own a gun you are allowed to wear the gun in a holster out in public. This practice is quite prevalent in my town and I often see people wearing a pistol on their hip. Elko is populated heavily if people in the ranching industry and mining with strong Republican Party ties. Here Republicans' outnumber democrats 3 to 1 (nvsos.gov, 2016) so owning firearms is very common. I have seen people wearing holsters with guns at the grocery store, walking down the street, and at city events. The results in this poll were taken nationwide but I found it interesting how strong the political separation was. The sample size was 1,140 voters and the margin of error was ±2.9%. This issue had very obvious political lines with Republican's feeling safer at 75% and Democrats feeling less safe at 83%, Independents were split at 44% in favor and 43% against. Since the margin of error was only ±2.9% there were no significant differences in the political portions. The overall results nationwide were a lot closer with 44% feeling safer and 47% feeling less safe. This is where the margin of error plays a more important role in demonstrating how split public opinions really are on the issue of open carry laws. The sampling was taken from registered voters and because of this they already had affiliations with political parties. If the sampling was taken from the general population there may have been more people in the unsure category and less voting along political lines. The fact that is was nationwide also plays a large factor because different states would likely follow the same political trend if the sample was taken state by state.

References-

nvsos.gov. (2016, April). statistics. Retrieved from nvsos.gov: https://www.nvsos.gov/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=4237

Quinnipiac University. Dec. 16-20, 2015. N=1,140 registered voters nationwide. Margin of error ± 2.9.

Respond-

First Response to a Classmate's post: Visit pollingreport.com and review the poll posted by your classmate. Discuss the potential biases that might interfere with accurate estimates for the population parameter.

Second Response to a Classmate's post: Work backwards given the sample size used. Verify that the sample size used will provide the 95% confidence interval. (You can reference page 122-124 and Appendix 3.2G and use the PHStat Sample Size function.)

200 words each.