Home

Advertisement

Previous Entry | Next Entry

Polls (statistics question)

  • Oct. 15th, 2008 at 9:02 AM
Haha I have no idea what that means
I was looking at the polls from the past couple of days, and I have a question:
  • CBS News: Obama up by 14% (moe +/- 3%)
  • Zogby: Obama up by 3.8% (moe +/- 2.9%%
  • Rasmussen: Obama up by 5% (moe +/- 2%)
So, CBS News says that the lead must be between 11% - 17%, Zogby says 0.9% - 6.7%, and Rasmussen says 3% - 7%.

My question is, how can they claim these to be statistically accurate to those margins when they differ by so much? The CBS News results are totally outside the margin of error on the other two posts. Is the problem statistically flawed analysis, or are one (or more) of them just making things up?
  • Mood: confused

Comments

( Leave a comment )
[info]yakko7178 wrote:
Oct. 15th, 2008 02:27 pm (UTC)
47% (moe +/- 4.32%) of all statistics are made up, so I don't trust any of them. :)
| Reply | Thread
[info]jmcphers wrote:
Oct. 15th, 2008 04:07 pm (UTC)
It could be that the participants were asked slightly different questions. CBS might have asked "do you has a positive opinion of Obama;" Zogby might have asked "would you vote for him;" Ramussen might have asked "are you going to vote for Obama in November?"

I expect that they also might not have samples that are true cross-sections of the populations...
| Reply | Thread
[info]aardwolf wrote:
Oct. 15th, 2008 05:42 pm (UTC)
I've always wondered about that. How can a random sampling of 500 people in New York represent the sentiment of the entire country, if New York isn't the same political makeup as the rest of the country?
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]rawee1 wrote:
Oct. 15th, 2008 05:28 pm (UTC)
You forgot to read the whole headline!
* CBS News: Obama up by 14% (moe +/- 3%)with zombie eskimos.
* Zogby: Obama up by 3.8% (moe +/- 2.9%% with single parents on welfare.
* Rasmussen: Obama up by 5% (moe +/- 2%) with atheists who love Joe Biden's "'tude".
| Reply | Thread
[info]aardwolf wrote:
Oct. 15th, 2008 05:41 pm (UTC)
Re: You forgot to read the whole headline!
That can't be right... surely zombie eskimos would be from Alaska, and would be pro-Palin. ;-)
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]rawee1 wrote:
Oct. 15th, 2008 07:55 pm (UTC)
Re: You forgot to read the whole headline!
Oh, the eskimos are very territorial. I bet the Russians would be pro-Palin, though.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
( Leave a comment )