In the current election cycle, many media reports about polls are not including information about the margin of error.

Understanding the confidence interval will help you grasp what an election poll is -- or is not -- saying. As you might have guessed, the media consistently gets it wrong.

Polling experts are questioning whether the margin of error is a useful metric. Some say it should be banished.

The name “Margin of Error” reflects the fact that surveys are imperfect but that many of their imperfections are well known.

The difficulty, of course, is people forget about margin of error. And the reality is, is that a poll of about 1,000 likely voters have a margin of error of about three points.

INGLEWOOD — The Lakers’ 116-102 loss to the Clippers on Sunday night at Intuit Dome provided another example of lessons they’ve been reminded of constantly this season. Their margin for ...