Good Poll-Reading Advice from FiveThirtyEight.com
Here.
There’s nothing quite so annoying as hearing people spin the polls.
Back in 2007 I wrote a post about patriotism in which I said: IÂ’m going to annoy quite a few people with this post, but I have noticed for a number of years that Christians in America often conflate Christianity and American patriotism. … I didn’t post on July 4th this year, but I did…
… always consider the sampling error when you report the difference between successive polls. News organizations have been getting some better, in my subjective view, in noting when a result is within the sampling error in a particular poll, but they still report increases or decreases in a lead without that note. If a candidate…
I live in Florida where we have a lottery that is supposed to provide money for education. At the same time we have a strong resistance to allowing casino gambling. Now I’m not a gambler, and don’t recommend it. Some do it for entertainment, and I don’t have a problem with that. For me it…
Radley Balko (The Agitator) has an interesting article on actions of the Institute for Justice, which is helping some folks in Mississippi challenge the laws on spending to advocate for a political cause. The idea of such laws, of course, is to provide for openness and accountability in politics. In this case, however, it provides…
MSNBC reports that voter turnout is slightly higher than the last midterms and was just a tad over 40%. I have to say that I’m less than overwhelmed. Where are the other 60% of registered voters, not to mention all the ones who don’t bother to register. You can’t tell me that there was nothing…
I’m both unsurprised and unconcerned. Why do I say that when I urged people to vote? I believe in participation. I believe in doing our best with the political system we have available to us. I don’t believe in getting worried about it. In addition, by following good polling data, and avoiding partisan inflation of…