Thursday, September 20, 2012

Just how accurate are all these polls? A tool for reading polls

Next time you read a poll, look to see if the poll's party affiliations data is available. why is this important you ask?

Lets take a look at VIRGINIA.

According to Demograhic data supplied HERE for each state, Virginia is made up of:

Republicans 39%
Democrats 36%
Independent/Other 25%

There is a poll out today by Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS News, That has Obama leading Romney in that state by 4 points (50-46).

Upon closer examination of that poll, we find that this sample was made up of:

Independent 36%
Democrat 35%
Republican 24%

Now it's not rocket science to compare those numbers with the State of Virginia's party demographics numbers to see that they UNDER SAMPLED Republicans BIG TIME.

Having fun yet?

Lets do another. Lets do COLORADO.

Colorado is broken down this way by party affiliation:

Republican 35%
Democrat 33%
Independent/other 32%

A Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS News poll out today has Obama beating Romney by 1 point (48-47).

Like in Virginia above, lets look at this poll's COLORADO sample:

Republican 31%
Democrat 30%
Independent/Other 38%

Do I have your interest yet?

I'm not picking on Quinnipiac...Lets spread the wealth around. Lets look at Marquette University Law School Poll of WISCONSIN. This poll has Obama leading Romney by 14 points (54-40).

Now WISCONSIN is made up of:

Democrat 38%
Republican 34%
Independent/Other 28%

Now the Sample of the Wisconsin poll was made up of:

Independent 38%
Democrat 34%
Republican 26%

I'll stop here....You can draw your own conclusions.

Now I realize that conducting a poll is more complicated than I've made it look above. Saying that, I would hope that the NUMBER 1 GOAL of ALL POLLING COMPANIES would be to get the samples demographics as close to the states actual demographics as possible.

BTW, Bookmark this link. It has the states breakdown

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take a gander at this site that adjusts for all this skewing.
http://polls2012.blogspot.com/


BTW
Rand Paul is saying the election is over and that Romney has already won.

The polls are simply papering over this reality.

Machtyn said...

I like what Rand Paul is stating. Perhaps this article about Obama's retirement home to be ready in 2013 is an indication of the winds. I can only hope so... and work hard to make it happen.