Tag Archive 'Polls'

What’s more dishonest than an NYT editorial? An NYT poll.

Things have changed little since Mark Twain:  “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The Times is trumpeting a poll showing a huge number of Americans support Obama’s health care plan.  As Bruce Kesler explains, though, the devil is in the details, and quite the little devil it is.

A-ha! Now I get the whole statistical polling thing

Iowahawk explains it all (as Mike Devx already pointed out in a comment).  Read his post, and you will get a formula for statistical probability and you’ll get a little primer on why statistical probability, which is a static count, doesn’t work well in a dynamic field — especially one as dynamic as this year’s [...]

Do not fear the polls

DJ Drummond, who blogs at Wizbang, has two spectacular articles explaining in simple terms why we shouldn’t blindly trust the polls this year.  You should read them, here and here.  Bottom line:  no matter what the polls seem to be saying, make sure to vote.

A heartening rumor

I have no idea if this email, which I got from the local Republican grapevine, is true, so I offer it for whatever you think it’s worth: Good morning, I wanted to pass along something heard Saturday at a community event. As most of you may know, Zogby International is headquartered in our neck of [...]

Useful statistics

Before you let the polls spook you, Ann Coulter has some useful history: Reviewing the polls printed in the New York Times and the Washington Post in the last month of every presidential election since 1976, I found the polls were never wrong in a friendly way to Republicans. When the polls were wrong, which [...]

People, the computer and honesty

I’m going to take you back a few days to my post asking if American’s are really racist.  That was the one in which I questioned a poll that was struggling to figure out why the Messiah isn’t doing better and that concluded that it’s because Democrats are racists.  (Republicans are racists too, but they [...]

Damned lies and statistics

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 [...]

More on polls and the American voter

As they do every election year about this time, the polls strongly favor the Democrats, which is very disheartening.  Right around now I find it especially worrisome, because I think that Obama, emboldened by media adulation, is being more and more forthright about his political agenda, and it’s one that ordinarily would should have the [...]

I knew I smelled something fishy

The moment I saw the boastful headline yesterday announcing that, if the election were held today, either Obama or Hillary would beat McCain by a mile, I suspected that something was wrong. The numbers just didn’t sound right. And of course, they’re not: However, a closer look at the poll’s internals reveals that the poll’s [...]