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Skewed Polling
Sunday, 2004 August 29 - 12:11 pm
Most polls show the election to be very close. But I took a look at the numbers for a recent poll, and was startled (and pleased) by the real results.

This wasn't some fly-by-night poll here... this was the NBC and Wall Street Journal poll, conducted by Hart/McInturff on August 23rd through August 25th, for 806 registered voters. So you'd think it's pretty official and scientific. You can see the results for yourself here (3MB PDF).

The first oddity comes in question 2a, where 94% of respondents say they are very likely to vote in the election. Voter turnout is usually below 70%. This is just a minor thing, though; I'm sure plenty of people say they're going to vote but don't end up doing it.

The next oddity is in question F1, where 23% of respondents indicate that they are retired. Hmm, could it be that retirees are more likely to have time to sit around answering phone polls than working folks? Note that blue-collar workers only make of 13% of respondents. In actuality, 17% of Americans are retirees, and 27% of Americans are blue-collar workers.

How about question F8, where 11% of respondents lists themselves as currently serving in the military, or having an immediate family member currently in the military? The total size of the U.S. armed forces is less than 1% of the population. Unless the average size of a military family is 10 people, I don't see how you get a value even close to 11%.

The really alarming thing is question F2, where 45% of respondents indicated they voted for George Bush in the 2000 election, compared to just 33% of Al Gore. Now, we know that Gore won the popular vote in 2000, so if the sample were truly random, we wouldn't have see this result. This is far too large a discrepancy to be just statistical noise.

Bush gets a 47% overall approval rating (question 4a), and BC04 seems to be leading KE04 by a few percentage points (question 7a). But you can look at it this way: If Gore only got 33% of these folks' votes and Kerry stands to get 45%, that's a hefty gain for the Democrats.

This exercise has made me doubt the accuracy of media polls. They don't seem to be making a scientific effort to get a truly random sample. I think the Democrats are in a better position than people think, and that we just might be surprised at how well Kerry does in November. Chin up, Democrats!
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Posted by Ken in: politics

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