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In article , "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

The FACT remains that there's a much larger chance that the poll
correctly
describes the overall electorate than that it doesn't.

you have much more faith in polls than I do.

--
Bob Noel
Seen on Kerry's campaign airplane: "the real deal"
oh yeah baby.

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Newps" wrote in message
...
Polls are facts about statistics.

A poll isn't a fact about anything except the people who participated.

The poll itself is a fact about the statistical sample taken. Which is
exactly what I said (though apparently not in a verbose enough way for
some
of you).

If you feel you have some good reason to dispite the Gallup poll results,
I'm all ears. If all you can come up with is "well, there's a
0.000000001%
chance that the poll is incorrect", then while that may be perfectly true,
it's a pretty useless statement.

The FACT remains that there's a much larger chance that the poll correctly
describes the overall electorate than that it doesn't.

You would be hard pressed to prove that. Polls are at best one step above a
WAG.

Pete

Dave Stadt wrote:



You would be hard pressed to prove that. Polls are at best one step above a
WAG.

Science proves it. But, everything has to go right for the poll to
achieve that margin of error. First you must get a represenative random
sample. This rarely happens, there's always a little error here.
Second the questions must not be skewed one way or the other. Third,
the people must tell the truth. This also never happens. They always
give the margin of error when you see a poll, this is a theoretical
number that cannot be reached because no poll will ever be truly random,
somebody always lies, or says they're someone their not, etc. One of
the pollsters on TV this week said that to get the 850+ responses for a
+-3% poll they had to call over 10,000 people. With those kinds of
problems no way can a poll be anymore than a guess.

Peter Duniho wrote:


The FACT remains that there's a much larger chance that the poll correctly
describes the overall electorate than that it doesn't.

This statement is correct. There is a chance the poll represents the
actual fact. Depending on how accurate you want to be you can also say
the poll never correctly describes the actual fact. The poll will
always get you close, how close depends on the sample size. The same
science that tells you how close also tells you it will never be exactly
right.

"Peter Duniho" writes:
"Newps" wrote:

Polls are facts about statistics.

A poll isn't a fact about anything except the people who participated.

The poll itself is a fact about the statistical sample taken. Which is
exactly what I said (though apparently not in a verbose enough way for some
of you).

If you feel you have some good reason to dispite the Gallup poll results,
I'm all ears. If all you can come up with is "well, there's a 0.000000001%
chance that the poll is incorrect", then while that may be perfectly true,
it's a pretty useless statement.

The FACT remains that there's a much larger chance that the poll correctly
describes the overall electorate than that it doesn't.

My favorite statistics story: I was reading an article about
weather prediction in which NOAA claimed about 75% accuracy
in their predictions. You can say that tomorrow's weather
will be the same as today's and be about 90% accurate in most
parts of the world.

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...
This is hilarious. Do you think that people who voted for Kerry had
their
facts any more straight?

Yes. The Gallup poll shows that to be the case, at least with respect to
Bush's statements.

It would have been interesting if the Gallup poll would have asked Kerry's
supporters whether Bush really had a secret plan to introduce the draft, or
whether Bush lost those explosives, or whether Bush had a secret plan to get
rid of Social Security, or whether Bush was behind a secret conspiracy to
create a flu vaccine shortage.

The Gallup poll only addressed Republican myths. If it had asked about
Democratic myths it might perhaps have been considerably more balanced in
its result.

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...
It would have been interesting if the Gallup poll would have asked Kerry's
supporters whether Bush really had a secret plan to introduce the draft,
or
whether Bush lost those explosives, or whether Bush had a secret plan to
get
rid of Social Security, or whether Bush was behind a secret conspiracy to
create a flu vaccine shortage.

Absolutely, it would have been interesting. Some of your examples are
extreme, and I doubt significant numbers would have affirmed those examples.
But surely it would have turned up a similar lack of knowledge of the actual
facts.

The Gallup poll only addressed Republican myths. If it had asked about
Democratic myths it might perhaps have been considerably more balanced in
its result.

I guess that depends on what information you're interested. But none of
your alternative examples seem nearly as important as the question of
whether a sitting President lied about what he knew, in order to win
approval for a war that wound up miring us in a huge stinking pile of doo,
and then continued to lie about what he said straight through the election.

My main point was simply that the electorate in general believes what they
want to believe, regardless of what the actual truth is. This is true of
all people, regardless of party affiliation. My secondary, much less
important point (especially now that the election is over), might be that I
personally feel that lying to the public in order to justify a deadly war is
a much bigger transgression than has been witnessed in the Executive branch
since the Iran-Contra scandal.

Pete

Peter Duniho wrote:

snip

My main point was simply that the electorate in general believes what they
want to believe, regardless of what the actual truth is. This is true of
all people, regardless of party affiliation. My secondary, much less
important point (especially now that the election is over), might be that
I personally feel that lying to the public in order to justify a deadly
war is a much bigger transgression than has been witnessed in the
Executive branch since the Iran-Contra scandal.

Pete

Very well put Pete.

I'd add that even if the Iraq invasion was justified it was bungled badly.
The administration ignored its own experts and we lost lives because of it.
For that reason alone they don't merit being returned to office.

--
Frank....H