Opinion Polls - How They Work and Why We Have Them

Turn on any cable news network in the United States right now and your're bound to hear about declared and possible candidates for the 2016 Presidential election. Over the next 18 months we're sure to hear about lots of opinion polls related to the election. When and where did modern political opinion polls start? How are they conducted? How are the results used? Those questions and more are answer in The Open University's Opinion Polls in a Nutshell. The videos are embedded below.


If you are using these videos in a civics class outside of the U.K. there are a couple of parts in the third video that you may need to explain and or modify for your students.

These videos could be turned into short flipped lessons in which you add questions for students to answer. The six tools in this list can help you do that.