ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION POLL

The poll of 702 registered voters was conducted Jan. 7 through Thursday by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs. The margin of error is 3.7 percentage points.

How the poll was conducted: The poll was conducted Jan. 7-17 and included a total of 702 registered voters in Georgia. The survey was administered by the School of Public and International Affairs Survey Research Center at the University of Georgia. Interviews were conducted in English. The sample included 65 percent cellphone numbers and 35 percent landline numbers and was obtained through Self Made Insights Co. (SMI is a sampling vendor that maintains a database constructed from state voter registration lists. Through commercial sources, phone numbers have been added to the individual records [registrants] that make up these lists). The survey results were weighted to ensure the sample was representative of the registrant population in terms of race, sex and age. The margin of error for the total sample is 3.7 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. This would mean that if 50 percent of respondents indicate a topline view on an issue, we can be 95 percent confident that the population’s view on that issue is somewhere between 53.7 percent and 46.3 percent.

Note: This survey queried registered voters in Georgia and was weighted to be representative of that population in terms of race, age and sex. The registrant population is not the same as the electorate that voted in the general election in 2018. The AJC election polls conducted in the fall of 2018 surveyed likely general election voters and were weighted to reflect predicted turnout for the general election that year. Polling registered voters is standard practice in non-election years.

BOB ANDRES / BANDRES@AJC.COM 2018 Most voters polled appear to trust paper ballots bubbled in with a pen over computer-printed paper ballots. Critics of Georgia’s electronic voting machines say they could be hacked to change election results. Some voters reported that the machines flipped their votes from one candidate to another in November’s election. Supporters of ballot-marking devices say they’d help prevent mistakes from voters using a pen and paper.