Can someone explain how the sampling works? Do the pollsters decide on their sample percentages (say 40% dem, 30% repubican and 30% indep) and then call 40% registered dems, 30% registered reps and 30% independents or do they call a thousand people and if the amount of republicans happened to be 50% they eliminate 20% of those responses because their republican target was 30%.
Never understood how this works
They just weight it based on their desired percentage. Think of it like homework - if you have two assignments, one worth 60% of your final grade and one worth 40%, it doesn’t matter what you get on each one, they multiply the final result by .40 and .60 respectively.
Likewise, if they called 10 republicans and 90 democrats, but they wanted an even sample, they would just times 50% by what the republicans prefer and 50% of what the democrats prefer to eat their sample.
I've gotten several poll calls. At the end, they ask me my party affiliation, sex, age range, and other demographic data. I'm guessing they use that to weight the responses according to a formula.
I like having fun with them on automated polls, by selecting that I'm a black, female, democrat who hates Obama.