[1][2] Impromptu straw polls often are taken to see if there is enough support for an idea to devote more meeting time to it, and (when not a secret ballot) for the attendees to see who is on which side of a question.
However, in meetings subject to Robert's Rules of Order, motions to take straw polls are not allowed.
However, they provide important interactive dialogue among movements within large groups, reflecting trends like organization and motivation.
In 2015 the Iowa Republican Party voted to abolish the poll, after a majority of presidential candidates declined to participate.
A margin of error is intrinsic in any subset polling method, and is a mathematical function of the difference in size between the subset and the larger population; sampling error is constant across different poll methods with the same sample sizes.
By relying on identity information, such as that publicly traceable to telephone numbers or voter registration addresses and that voluntarily provided by respondents such as age and gender, polls can be made more scientific.
Straw polls may be improved by: asking identity questions, tracing group-based trends, and publishing statistical studies of the data.