> Sample size is not everything "Literary Digest poll was also one of the largest and most expensive polls ever conducted, with a sample size of around 2.4 million people" The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h...

But isn't that really only the case when you're trying to use statistical inference to generalize from a sample? It seems like the right way to think about this poll is as a direct measurement of a floor of support for the challenger (others have said that is >2x the her official vote count), and the right statistical question is to ask is what's the probability that the official results are true given that floor.