4 Responses to “Tables”

1. Kolea:
   May 17th, 2011 at 12:00 pm

   WOW. Exemplary behavior!

   I have read through the comments on the Disqus board attached to the articles discussing the Senate and Rail polls. It is disheartening to read so many ignorant comments from people who have no understanding of polling.

   I salute the release of the actual data so (some) people can better understand how a poll works, where the methodology can introduce errors, and maybe even an understanding of their limitations.

   My own feeling is that people should be very skeptical of polls when the sponsors refuse to release the questions and all the data.

   A personal pet peeve: I HATE online “polls” which encourage people to express their opinion on “the issue of the day.” I do not regard them as harmless, in that they encourage misunderstanding of how a properly designed poll works. Which only intensifies the widespread notion that there is no objective “reality,” just competing viewpoints.



2. Paul:
   May 17th, 2011 at 4:06 pm

   Thank you publishing this. This should on the front page so that everyone understands how the poll was made. A Lot of misinformation being spread about alleged inaccuracy of the polls.



3. Goober:
   May 17th, 2011 at 9:04 pm

   No offense taken.
   I do believe that there are those who comment from google and pass it on as facts from their own brain. Still copied and still an opinion. It seems only a few qualify to make factual comments when regardless of what is still an opinion.

   Yada, Yada, Yada. Blah, blah, blah!



4. Kolea:
   May 18th, 2011 at 3:28 am

   I’ve been perusing the data and it appears the voters’ self reporting of their voting habits does not comport with actual voting behavior. Asked which primary they usually vote in, it comes back as Dem 66%, Rep 24% and N/A 10%.

   Here are the actual percentages from recent primaries:
   2010: Dems 82%, Rep 16%
   2008: Dems 79%, Rep 17%
   2006: Dems 86%, Rep 12%
   2004: Dems 70%, Rep 24%

   This discrepancy might be explained by a very recent shift in self-identification of some voters towards the GOP, which causes more to THINK of themselves as voting in the Republican primary even if they actually have not done so in the past.

   Or it may mean the sampling has an over-representation of Republican respondents.

   I suspect this distortion occurs in every poll taken this far out, when prospective voters are asked which primary they intend to vote in. It is probably somewhat reflective of their party self-identification and they think they will vote in the primary of the party with which they most identify.

   But as the actual primary approaches a lot of Republicans see their is no interesting contest on their own party ballot, so they cross over and vote in the exciting contests on the Democratic primary ballot. But in the following General Election, most of them go back to their own party and vote for the Republican candidate.

   In my opinion, cross over voting, while legal, is unethical. But civics literacy being extremely low, a lot of voters do not understand the purpose of a primary, so they can hardly be expected to feel guilty for interfering with the other party’s internal decision-making. Both the Democratic and Republican party leaderships have recently called for moving to a closed primary. But there wouldn’t be any problem if the Republicans would only learn basic civics and stop trespassing into the Democratic primary.

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