Quote Originally Posted by BigBoom550 View Post
17,000 votes is outstanding sampling. 1,000 is considered pretty representative in most cases.
It all depends on the methodology. 1,000 cases is considered representative, but only if the sample is statistically random (the way most professional organizations conduct political polls, for example). With a playerbase of over 1 million people (and Japanese playerbase probably ~400k), a poll of 17k all depends on how the data was gathered. I don't know this specific poll, but many "unofficial" online ones just become what are called "voluntary samples" (some even prone to allowing people to vote multiple times), which in the statistics world are known for being very unreliable.