On Wednesday the 28th, the Northwood Mirror conducted a poll designed to measure the Northwood community’s preferences for the 2016 presidential election. At school meeting, all the students and faculty members had the chance to cast one vote, either for Hillary Clinton (VP candidate Tim Kaine), Gary Johnson (Bill Weld), Jill Stein (Ajamu Baraka), or Donald Trump (Mike Pence). The results are as follows:
In the spring of 2016, The Mirror conducted a mock presidential primary on the day New Hampshire residents cast their primary votes. The voting certainly has changed. Bernie Sanders won the survey with 38.33 percent of the vote. Sanders is no longer a candidate for the office, as he was beaten by Clinton in the primary. Clinton was in third place in the survey with 10.83 percent. Donald Trump was second in the mock primary with 21.66 percent. These results indicate that the Northwood community did prefer Sanders over Clinton, but even after Sanders was eliminated, his supporters must have drifted towards Clinton, as she had only half as many votes as Trump in the spring, but now has beaten him by roughly 5 percent.
The presidential candidates, clockwise from top left: Donald J. Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. (Source: www.peoplespunditdaily.com)
Compared to current national polls, our survey is quite accurate. In the CNN poll of polls (an average of the results of the five most recent nationwide telephone polls of presidential preference among voters), Hillary Clinton is winning with 44 percent. Donald Trump is second with 42 percent, and Johnson and Stein trail with 8 and 2 percent respectively. The candidates in the Northwood Mirror survey are in the same order as CNN’s poll, and no percentage of vote differs by more than 5 percent. The leader in both polls, Hillary Clinton, is off by only less than one percent.
To determine how valid The Mirror’s recent survey was, we have consulted with statistics expert and math faculty David Vitale. He says that when examining the accuracy of the poll, the most important factor are the similarities and differences between the Northwood community and the entire population of America eligible to vote. Our 141 voters is a large enough sample to be accurate, as shown, but there are a few inconsistencies. First, there is a large age difference. Most voters in The Mirror’s poll were 18 years old or younger, and the American population of voters are all 18 or older. The other two factors that stand out as outliers are our racial and geographical diversity, neither of which are very representative of America as a whole. Nevertheless, we have conducted a very accurate and informative survey, with only a slight deviation.
