Saturday, January 07, 2006

Does the media care anymore?

I was somewhat sad to see a poll that heavily favored Dem's in the 2006 election. I do believe that if they can get their heads out of their asses for about 30 seconds they can pick up a few seats. But then I see once again how the media has no concern about running a biased and flawed poll. It's just another case of throwing out an ajenda. This stuff done over and over does hurt the Right. I can not believe there are still people who believe the media is balanced...and some very insane people believe it is Right wing....then how does a poll with this sample size get published:

REGISTERED VOTERS

Strongly Republican .......................... 13

Moderately Republican ..................... 27

Definitely Independent/neither............ 8

Moderately Democrat........................ 32

Strongly Democrat ............................ 20

Refused/not sure.................................. 0

Total Republican ............................ 40

Total Democrat ............................... 52

7 comments:

Jim said...

You are still getting your "scientific" information from News Busters?

If you asked a thousand people if they like chocolate or vanilla and 52% said chocolate and 40% said vanilla, does that mean you over-sampled chocolate lovers. I don't think so. If you start out by making sure your sample has an equal number of what you're trying to determine, what's the point?

I think the pollsters figured out a statistically valid sample with a margin of error of about 3% and the results were the results.

Mike M said...

Game, you've posted nothing here to draw conclusions from. If all we know is that there was some poll with 100 people sampled and this was the sample, who really cares? What does it prove? There's no evidence here of bias unless it is stated, implied or assumed by the reader to be an accurate cross section of a specific set of people, and that set is known to have a different composition, or the set from which the sample is taken is different than the set the poll claims to represent. A purely random sample of a hundred thousand people in New York City will yield a different mix than one from Idaho, and both would be darn powerful, extremely accurate polls FOR THEIR RESPECTIVE REGIONS. Similarly, a poll of 100 people in a swimming pool could be 98% accurate for the 500 people in the rec center that day...but the results would be anywhere from meaningless to vague if applied to a general population.

Also important to consider are the questions themselves, the phrasing, etc. A skilled pollster, working with a dumb enough group of people, can make up a battery of questions to tilt the results one way or the other as much as 30%. So while a sampling of 100 people is enough all by itself to make a poll irrelevant it doesn't necessarily make it biased.

Anonymous said...

You are going to have a difficult time finding any poll in the MSM that favors Republicans. They have their agenda and aren't going to abandon it. The polls don't matter to the voters, and the liberal idiots like Jim still aren't in the whitehouse!

The Game said...

Jim and mike are trying to argue that 52% of the population describes themselves at democrats....that is the only way that this poll has a accurate sample of the population. The last time I saw a study done on what % of people are which party it was 45 Republican, 42 Dem, and 13 "I'm to stupid to have an opinion."

And yes, the way questions are worded does affect the outcome...and in that instance there is a great deal of evidence that shows polls are asked in ways to favor the left as well. I'll post that information the next time it happens, which will probably be in a few days.

And AAA, yes, the MSM is not fair and balanced, and they report stories in a way that over time hurt the Right. The xoff story is one of them. Of course, I post these stories and show why they are slanted, but you seem to have some sort of memory loss issues.

Google HiJacked My Site said...

Saturday Kos and Charlie Cook threw in the towel. "it is unlikely that they (Dems) will be able to put the 50 Republican seats in play that is thought to be necessary to have a reasonable chance of scoring a net gain of 15 (house) seats. A more likely result is that Democrats end up with a net gain of between four and nine seats, roughly cutting the Republican margin in half in this midterm election campaign... The bottom line is that even if one assumes that Republicans are going to have a very bad election year in 2006, the odds are still quite high that they will maintain a majority in the Senate, albeit with a diminished margin."

I love the laughable '06 failure is "positioning us nicely for a 2008 takeover" article end quote by Kos.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/7/164559/1164

AP internals:
http://www.anklebitingpundits.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2916&mode=nested&order=1&thold=0

Jim said...

Why do you doubt that the majority of Americans describe themselves as democrats? Doesn't mean they always vote democrat (obviously). Where is your data showing otherwise?

The Game said...

Well Jim,
I have two polls that show both parties around 32% and the rest being independant...

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=750

has tons of data....including that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to be a Republican (until you get your PH.D.)