Patters

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - CNN Poll: More Americans think Democratic policies better than Republican - Blogs from CNN.com

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday indicates that a bare majority of Americans, 51 percent, believe that the Democrats' policies are good for the country, with 46 percent saying that those policies would take the country in the wrong direction.

By contrast, 53 percent of people questioned in the poll say that the GOP's polices would move the nation in the wrong direction, with 42 percent saying Republican policies are good for the country.

"The numbers for both parties are virtually unchanged since late August, just before President Barack Obama's health care speech to Congress opened the latest round of debate on this divisive issue," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

patsfan13

IOW they oversampled dems. Not suprising from CNN.

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"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

IcyPatriot

Interviews with 1,160 adult Americans, including an oversample of African-Americans,

............Right Direction...............Wrong Direction................... NoOpinion

...............51% ..............................46% ................................3%

Blacks........ 82%............................ 16% .................................3%

Whites ........42%............................ 53%................................ 4%

Why not a poll with sample equal to the racial diversity of the country?

African-Americans make up 14% of our population.

In this poll they represented 22.3% of the poll.

Patters

Your point shows you don't understand the fundamentals of polling. Oversampling doesn't mean they count up the responses and determine percentages. When tabulating results, pollsters apply some sort of weighting to adjust for oversampling. Oversampling is very common in poll taking, and is used to get a more accurate reading on a specific group, such as blacks.

Despite my criticism of your point, patsfans13's point is even worse, since I see nothing to support his claim that the poll oversamples Democrats. Perhaps he'll show me a link.

IcyPatriot

But your thread said "Americans Prefer Democratic Policies" ... it didn't say "blacks tip poll to democrats"

It should say a slanted group of Americans prefer democratic policies.

The majority of America is moderate right ... it's what it's.

Patters

Icy, you're not getting it. You don't understand what oversampling is and seem to believe that pollsters use childhood arithmetic to calculate their results. Let's try this:

Pollster.com: Even Polls About Baseball...

"Pollsters sometimes 'oversample' a survey sub-population in order to increase the reliability of the results for that group. More interviews means less potential random sampling error. Before tabulating the data for the full sample, however, they 'weight' back the oversample its correct proportion with the larger sample."

IcyPatriot

I minored in math in college ... went as high as differential equations ... I get the math. Also took every probability and stats courses the college had to offer ... the poll is misleading and the thread is right up there with it.

Many Americans are upset with the health care stuff.
Many Americans are upset with the economy.

But more Americans prefer democratic policies.

I think even a 5th grader could sniff this one out.

I think tomorrow I'll poll Arab-Americans and ask them if they prefer we attack Israel or Iran.

PatriotsReign

Sampling is something my company & I do all the time. Your explanation is a tad BS Patters....why didn't they "over-sample" republicans and then go back and adjust their numbers....Hmmm?

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"No one walking this earth knows what is truly righteous"

PatriotsReign

Even the OPINIONS of black Americans is skewed due to their tendancy to blindly support this particular president. Blacks actually should have represented a smaller % of the sample than their % of the population.

It should have been republicans and independents that were over-sampled.

__________________
"No one walking this earth knows what is truly righteous"

Patters

The poll is not misleading. You chose to go to the source that used a technical word you don't understand. You obviously do not understand what oversampling is, but for some reason want to continue to argue the point. You have a better knowledge of math and maybe even statistics than I do, but that does not mean you know what oversampling is.

I know what oversampling is because it's used in the social sciences a lot where ethnicity, race, etc. are important issues. If you do a poll of 1000 people and want info about Native Americans, your poll sample might include only 15 Native Americans. That is not enough of a sample size to get any real insight into Native Americans, so you oversample them in order to get more insight and accuracy of their views, but when you compile the poll you don't include the oversample. Why didn't they oversample Republicans (or Democrats). Probably because the sample size already included a statistically significant number of both groups.

And why in the world would you reduce the number of blacks in the poll? What do you think, blacks should count as 3/5ths of person? Your point makes no sense. The fact that blacks support Obama in larger numbers (actually numbers similar to their support for Clinton) is irrelevant, and I'm rather shocked that you would actually state that poll numbers should be skewed to underrepresent the views of black Americans. Poll results should represent the actual percent of blacks, and there is nothing in the poll to indicate that's not the case. (All the oversampling ensures is that the poll results for black Americans are more accurate than the poll results for, e.g., Native Americans.)