Thursday, July 30, 2009

Poll Interpretation

The framing of the questions causes me to suspect most polls other than Gallup and Rasmussen. Too many holes. When you ask people whether the country is headed in the right direction, you lump the folks who think we are doing crazy stuff in with the people who believe we aren't doing crazy stuff anywhere near fast enough. That's a bimodal distribution, and worthless.

Still, there are some things you can learn from national polls if you are alert to the tricks from How To Lie With Statistics. The recent polls that show Obama and the Democrats fall rapidly in relation to the Republicans - who haven't got much of a positive program going these days - tells me the American people have learned two things, in the wrong order.
1. 50% of Republicans are corrupt bastards who believe in big government and could not give a FF about the middle class.
2. The Democrats are worse.

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