[I am Darvon]

So I heard an amazing statistic on the radio yesterday

Of the black voters in America:
1% voted for Nader
9% voted for Bush
90%...yes, 90% voted for Kerry

So, Georgie, pat yourself on the back for now.  Enjoy your five week-or-so long vacations a year.  but might want to work on your non-white-upper-middle-to-upper-class communication skills.

[Mark Lippert]

Why would he bother?  It's not like he has to kiss anyone ass anymore.

[Snick]

Please forgive me Darvon, this is a real sore spot with me, so I need to say it.  I mean no disrespect to you - only to the media fools who insist on blowing this useless information out into the world.

That stat is based on EXIT POLLS.  Do you know how many people were involved in Wisconsin's exit polls?  2,321.  So, of the nearly 3 million people in Wisconsin who voted, they got all of their fancy little numbers based off of a tiny, minute fraction of the real people.  It burns me when I sit there and listen to the news reporters tell us x% of the voters feel this way and y% feel that way.  No one asked me or the 30 people I saw at the polls when I voted!

Again, I apologize.  The media garbage out there gets me in kind of a foul mood at times, and this week has been a real winner!  

[Lawson]

 I mean no disrespect to you - only to the media fools who insist on blowing this useless information out into the world...That stat is based on EXIT POLLS.  

Hold the phone, pretty kitty...

First, and more of a side note, I tend to disagree that racial demographics are useless information in a presidential election.

Second, I think it holds true that early exit poll information cannot be taken seriously in terms of factual accuracy. For example, this year a lot of the early, and again I stress the word early, exit polls showed a clear lead for Kerry.

However, the particular fact to which Darvon was eluding (black vote demos), was indeed collected by two exit poll companies by the names of Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, both of whom reported that only 11% of the black vote went to Bush this year...

This projection, albeit early, mirrors the factual demographics of black voters in the past. We know that in the 2000 election Bush only garnered 8% of the black vote, which interestingly, was the lowest % of black votes for a republican nominee since Barry Goldwater (he only mustered 6% of the black votes) when he ran against LBJ in 1964.

In fact, historically, black voters routinely give democrats around 90% of their votes.

The error due to sampling for most state exit poll questions is approximately plus or minus 4 percentage points. This means 95 times out of 100, samples will have results within 4 points of what a complete count of all voters would show. Results of the national and regional exit polls have a margin of error of between 1 and 2 percentage points.


So, I suppose,  we definitely need to be cautious of early exit poll numbers (numbers that are reported half way through an election day)... but in this particular case, they will likely end up being pretty darn accurate.

[I am Darvon]

Didn't mean to start any debate or fight.  Just mentioning what i hear on the radio.

In all honesty, I didn't even vote.  Why, you ask (or not)?  Well, pretty much, it was because I felt we were putting a moron in office with either candidate.  And putting in my vote for the lesser of two morons is not really worth my going to a polling place.  that's my opinion and i'm sticking to it  

[Snick]

Didn't mean to start any debate or fight.  Just mentioning what i hear on the radio.

I know you didn't mean to start anything, Darvon - you just heard it in passing - that's my point.  In the 60-120 seconds they have to spew out this information, the media does not take the time to explain where the info comes from.  People catch tidbits of information like this in passing, without hearing the whole story... because it is not given to them.

As far as my comment about usless info, let me clarify: the information itself is not useless, if it were accurate.  I certainly think age groups, race and gender are important to track - if tracked factually.  Giving or taking 4 points on a poll is just not accurate enough - until I see an exit poll tracking at least 10% of the people who vote at every single polling location, these numbers will continue to be nothing more than fluff used by the media to show how much they "know".

Again, forgive my rant.  The media just really irks me sometimes, and lately, I'm a tad more irked by them than usual.  

[Paul]

I agree with a lot of your concerns here.  But in this particular instance, do you really think it matters a lot whether John Kerry got 86% or 94% of the black vote.  Either way, I'm pretty sure the point remains the same.

[Lawson]

As far as my comment about usless info, let me clarify: the information itself is not useless, if it were accurate.  I certainly think age groups, race and gender are important to track - if tracked factually.  Giving or taking 4 points on a poll is just not accurate enough - until I see an exit poll tracking at least 10% of the people who vote at every single polling location, these numbers will continue to be nothing more than fluff used by the media to show how much they "know".

No worries, guys, we're not debating... just trying to spread democratic love by learning the facts!  

Snick, these exit poll companies (specifically the ones I mentioned above) take painstaking care to ensure that their error of margine is extremely low. These polls are all based on statistics (I know,yuck) that calculate the 'statistical power' needed to achieve numbers with a standard of error low enough to be pretty darn accurate.

I am not sure how you arrived at a sample size of 10% of the Wisconsin population to quell your fears of an inaccurate representation of the demographic data? I agree that, the bigger the sample size, the closer you will be to the true number of black voters for Kerry or Bush... but in the real world that just isn't possible.

In fact, almost all of the facts that we hear are based on a small sample size (yet large enough to yield significant results when compared to control groups). All scientific studies are conducted on a small sample size used to represent the total population.

Every drug we take, whether it be birth control, aspirin, cough suppressant, penicillin, etc. was only tested on an incredibly small percentage of the total human population (especially given how many people take these kinds of popular drugs). I know I'm belaboring the point, but just imagine if a drug company had to test out one of it's drugs on 10% of the human population before it was made accesable to the public. The world population is roughly 6,397,510,180 (wow)... which means a company like Abbott or Baxter would have to test the effects of their drug on 639,751,018 people... yikes.

I think the problem is not the small sample sizes of these exit polls (because like I said, they end up being pretty darn accurate in the end) that make them problematic... it's that the numbers are reported very early... before most of the population has cast their vote... which can screw with the statistics. People do not take these numbers with a grain of salt and are too anxious to wait the 24-48 hours until all votes are in and all intended "pollees" have been polled.

Exit polls are actually good things, as long as we understand how they work and how we can use them to get the most accurate information out of them.

Again, no debating or fighting... and I hope I didn't send anybody under the bed huddling in the fetal position when I started talking about statistics...

And believe me, I definitely agree with you that if we could poll every single voter that would be the best, most accurate representation of the voters.

Damn that enormous, ever increasing population...

[Mauricio]

I hesitated a lot before posting this link. But well, I still found it funny

[that Steve dude]

All I will say is that Tuesday is over; thankfully no more damn political commercials from either side on TV and radio. I just hope people will put their damn political convictions aside and live with each other. I sure as hell would rather drink beer with someone than discuss politics.

The views and opinions expressed by Steve do not necessarily reflect those of Pat McCurdy, patmccurdy.com, its webmaster, employees, or management.