Damned lies and statistics
Bookworm on Jun 24 2008 at 5:21 pm | Filed under: Media matters
This sounds dreadful — until you read this, and discover that it’s not dreadful, it’s profoundly dishonest. And it’s the dishonesty that’s the true horror.
Have past elections been characterized by such terrible dishonesty? I wonder if these lies, damn lies and statistics were always out there tainting the flow of information, and we simply didn’t realize it because of the media monopoly.
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The indicated articles contain this nugget:
From the poll:
In this national poll’s random sample of voters, 39% identified themselves as Democrats, 22% as Republicans, and 27% as independents.
The author then states:
39% of those they surveyed were Dems, while 22% were Republicans. That’s a 17-point spread. Considering those two factors, can anyone be shocked that the results favor Barack Obama?
The problem is, every national poll indicates that people are self-identifying themselves as Democrats this year at a much higher rate than Republicans. The Republican brand is struggling this year… but a 17% gap seems higher than it should be.
Here’s an excerpt from a March 20th, 2008 Pew Research Center article that identifies the gap at that time as 9%. ( http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans )
The balance of party identification in the American electorate now favors the Democratic Party by a decidedly larger margin than in either of the two previous presidential election cycles.
In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% identify themselves as Democrats, and just 27% as Republicans.
The share of voters who call themselves Republicans has declined by six points since 2004, and represents, on an annualized basis, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.
The Democratic Party has also built a substantial edge among independent voters. Of the 37% who claim no party identification, 15% lean Democratic, 10% lean Republican, and 12% have no leaning either way.
If these statistics bear out and are true, I think you would expect that most random-sampling polls would in fact contain more “Democrats” than “Republicans”. But not at a 17% gap.
I don’t remember Reagan being given much of a chance against Carter – the Polls seemed to prove Carter would beat Reagan – Stupid, out-of-touch, reckless Cowboy. Reagan was out-polled by Mondale. Bush was out-polled by Dukakis, Bush II was out-polled by Gore and then by Kerry.
The Pollsters manipulate the polling to influence the electorate. The fact that come election-time the electorate has not gone the way of the agenda-driven pollsters remains a huge mystery to the Socialist Democrats. Why the stupid people keep electing stupid people to office is the ever-present Meme. “We’re not doing a good enough job explaining what we stand for and who we are!”
Fact is, thinking Americans know exactly what the Dhimms stand for and precisely who they are.
McCain may not be as easy to pass of as stupid, but they’re trying it out – “He’s out-of touch!”
As always, while I enjoy seeing the rare Poll that reports things the way I want to see them, I ignore the results. Election Day voting is what matters. And Polls are a scam.
Mike is right; people are self identifying as Democrats. Rather than wasting our time accusing the polls of dishonesty (a charge I believe to be completely untrue as to the major polls, but a charge about which reasonable people can differ), we should be more concerned about how we turn this ship around before the election. We are in deep denial if we don’t recognize that, right now, among the majority of Americans, “Republican” is a code word for “selfish” and “evil”. How do we change that?
Here’s another aspect:
http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2008/06/obama-by-3-or-by-12.html