SocraticGadfly: ABC just hit a new low in polling teh stupidz

August 07, 2014

ABC just hit a new low in polling teh stupidz

Their latest polling says American people are in a political "snit," as they called it.

First, the reality.

ABC idiocy, refudiated / Chart from Wikipedia
The American public talks like this every two years, but until they start voting out their own bastards, it means nothing. Even if wingnuts vote out halfway sane Republicans in a few primaries, it still means nothing. What that ultimately is, is an anti-political snit.

Here's the really dumb part:
Single women also are a markedly more Democratic-inclined group. But married men tilt heavily in the opposite direction – toward the GOP – and there’s twice as many of them. Of such threads are election strategies woven.
Talk about bad use of stats. As I told friend Perry, where I first saw that, without use of teh Google, I'm sure that, political affiliation aside, there's more than twice as many married men in general as single women.

And, that nice Wikipedia chart helps me out. Throwing out the slightly larger number of women than men in America, and setting aside the small numbers of gay or lesbian marriage, for which there's almost certainly no national stats yet of note, and from 25-70, we have approximately two-thirds of the public currently married and one-third not.

So, yes, there's twice as many married men as conservative women. Duh. Try comparing married men to married women and single men to single women. Or married men to single men, or married women to single women.

Every idiot who knows anything about statistics, polling, etc., knows that you "control for" all but one variable in a comparison in normal such research.

There's other problems, too. The poll claims Hispanics are highly disenchanted with Republicans, without mentioning their abysmal turnout to vote

But Perry's right, overall, that this probably isn't good news for Democrats.

2 comments:

PDiddie said...

Maybe I should have done the same as you, simply dismissed the poll's results. Then I wouldn't have had to be so sarcastic about it.

As with most polling that one accepts (rather than rejecting), it fits a narrative that I believe: that the Democrats are in deepening trouble in November. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't; it's probably best for my mental health if I return to my "polls are like toilet paper, one quick pass-through only" mindset.

Gadfly said...

Actually, bad methodology aside, I halfway agree with the results, and your framing. Also on bad methodology, and relevant to here in Tejas, ABC notes the level of disgruntlement Hispanics have with GOP without noting their low turnout.