Tuesday, August 31, 2010

More about Out-liars

A little extra information regarding my post yesterday about the "weighting" of poll results by major media outlets.  The Newsweek Magazine poll released last week showing President Obama's approval rating to be 47 percent with 45 percent disapproving had some interesting "weighting" used.

Even more extreme than the CBS poll I discussed yesterday, Newsweek weighted the Democrat sample by 4 points while reducing the Republican sample by 3 points creating a false dichotomy of a 7 point spread between self-identified Republicans and Democrats.  As with the CBS News poll from yesterday, this is the exact spread from the 2008 election.  Is is really realistic to use those numbers now?

I suppose the unanswered question is WHY they would use obviously incorrect weighting to produce a poll that cannot help but be dismissed as an outlier?

Are they cheer leading, hoping to arouse the Democrat base?

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