Can someone help me out?

[ClintCooper2003]

I was just wondering something. On these exit polls, under each question, there's a letter "n" and then something like "= 2520." Does that mean only 2,520 people answered that particular question? TIA? Help!

[Carolab]

1. .

[thanatonautos]

3. Yep, that's how it looks to me.

For example, take the file:

US2004G_3970_PRES04_WE_V_Data.pdf

At the top of the table, in the cell above
the questions, it says Number of interviews
-2,640.

Then, right underneath the first question
is

Are you: (n=2,633) Male/Female.

And other questions are all the same,
with n<2640.

It sure seems that n is the total number
of responses to the question.

[ClintCooper2003]

4. Thanks. Well, the numbers regarding the question "Did you vote...

in the 2000 Presidential election?" are consistent. As it is broken down, Kerry picks up 50.9% to Bush's 47.9% within this question.

It just kind of concerned me because I thought that if only a small percentage went on to answer some of the other questions, it might result in less accuracy for those.

[TruthIsAll]

5. Clint, keep this in mind: If n =2500, MOE = 2%; for n=10,000, MOE = 1%

So those responses are very accurate.

N MOE
1000 3.16%
1500 2.58%
2000 2.24%
2500 2.00%
3000 1.83%
4000 1.58%
5000 1.41%
10000 1.00%
11027 0.95%
13047 0.88%

[thanatonautos]

6. Right ... it would affect the accuracy but TIA's table shows you

as long as you've got more than 2500 it's still reasonably
accurate. The random error is varying inversely as the square
root of the number of responders, so the number of responders
would have to be cut by a factor of four in order to double
the percentage size of the error.

(Edited to fix silly numerical mistake.)

[Oversea Visitor]

2. YUP