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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Opinion polls that try to ascertain if the electorate is x/100-x on an issue use at least 1000 participants. A more common divide would be 55/45 and there a sample of 50 people would certainly not be considered statistically significant. But really, a parliament of 1000 people isn't really problematic: the US has ~435 people in its lower house, India has ~550. For the US with a 1000 person lower house, per-capita representation would still be lower than that of many mid-sized countries.

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Sieben's avatar

If the electorate were 70/30 on an issue, you wouldn't need 1000 voters to get it "right" reliably.

If the electorate is 49.999/50.00001 though, you might need hundreds of thousands of voters. But at this point, I kind of throw my hands up and say who the f*ck cares. The marginal EV (practical or philosophical) of getting the vote "right" is basically nil and not enough to outweigh the superiority of a concentrated electorate over a dispersed one.

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