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Brandy Suarez
Philosophy 25
Professor Harrison
19 April 2016

Differences of Two Public Opinion Polls

Looking back to 2012, I was sixteen years old, a sophomore in high school. Before 2012
came around the discussion of the upcoming election was spoken about everywhere. This was
the first year that I had a better understanding of a presidential election. I was constantly told that
this election would be in the history textbooks for sure, simply because the possibility of having
our first African American president was in the process of happening. Along with all of these
drastic changes for our history books came the immeasurable number of public opinion polls.
For this essay I have decided to write about two different topics that are still to this day very
prevalent and important to our society: Public opinions on gay marriage and Obamas
administration offering contraception through his health care plan.

Before I start deciphering the differences between these two, I must admit that both of
these public opinion polls seem to offer a sufficient amount of support but the differences are that
the sources that they both originate from may lack credibility and so forth. The first public
opinion I came across was from the Utah Data Points website. The topic of discussion was how
did Utah vote on gay marriage and I must say I was partly surprised. Utah, at least in my opinion,

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never seems to be the main topic of discussion, but in this case gay marriage was a hot topic.
Kelly Patterson, the writer of this post, was a professor at Brigham Young University at the time
of the release of this posting. Before moving on, I would like to point out that BYU is a Mormon
focused school which would result in a bias of how people will vote. The property in question in
this article is Which of the following comes closest to your views?(Patterson). Following this
poll topic there were suggestions for the poll takers and there are as follows: Gay couples
should be allowed to legally marry, Gay couples should be allowed to form civil unions but not
legally marry. There should be no legal recognition of a gay couples relationship. The Utah
Data Points website had gotten their poll information from Gallup, Pew, and New York
Times/CBS. Each source, especially the Gallup, had provided that their form of contact was done
over the phone. Gallup even went as far as getting a Spanish speaker and they also stated that the
way they chose people was if the recipient landline holder had a recent birthday. From all three
of these sources, it seems as if they accumulated over one thousand participants all directly over
the phone. As I review the main source of which I first encountered which is the Utah Data
Points website, I feel as though it gives off a bias first impression as the site is covered in ads and
it is open for interpretation especially with allowing comments. Overall I would give the main
site a 7 but with the evidence from the three sources, (Gallup, Pew, and The New York Times), it
upped its credibility.

Moving onto the next source which covers a public poll dealt with Obamas
administration and the benefits it offered, particularly women contraceptive. The property in
question was what percentage of Rhode Island supported this new policy. The main source from
which I covered comes from Brown University. The issue at hand was if ...survey of Rhode

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Islands registered voters finds that President Obamas decision to address public concerns about
the role of religious organizations in providing contraceptive services under the Affordable
Health Care Act has been favorably received by Rhode Islanders. (Brown University). This
survey included 514 random participants which then concludes to a 4.3 margin of error,
according to the Brown University. Overall I feel as though, even though BU was the main
source, it did not allow for distractions or a bias. Because it is a school it already is credible and
cannot be changed for interpretation.

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Works Cited

"Americans Views on Same-Sex Marriage." The New York Times. The New York Times, 13
May 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

"Brown University." Rhode Island Supports Obama's Contraception Policy, February 2012. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Newport, Frank. "Half of Americans Support Legal Gay Marriage." Gallup.com. Gallup, n.d.
Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Patterson, Kelly. "Public Opinion on Gay Marriage in Utah." Utah Data Points. N.p., 09 July
2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.