Letters to the Editor
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it's a public forum
let 'em post it.
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Clinton's negatives are the only thing surging in her campaign
From SLATE. Looking like Clinton's a dead letter to everybody but the Clintonites...
After weeks of the Rev. Wright controversy swirling around cable news, it's Hillary Clinton—not Barack Obama—whose unfavorability ratings are at their highest since she became a senator. According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 48 percent of the country has somewhat negative or very negative opinions about Clinton. That number includes Republicans and Democrats, but far outstrips Obama's 32 percent and John McCain's 25. Obama's negatives have barely moved since March 7, before Wright's comments started making the rounds.
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PA Sen. bob Casey to endorse Obama today
And join him on his PA bus tour
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Ignorance
"he WSJ/MSNBC poll oversampled African Americans. Polls are supposed to represent population percentages of national demographics, yet this poll sampled twice as much of african-americans as populate the US. Since they are going for Obama 9 out of 10, no wonder the stats are skewed."
What an ignorant comment. This exhibits the problem with people commenting when they don't know anything.
The sample size is one thing. Of course they over-sampled blacks. HOWEVER, THE SAMPLING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THEY USE THE INFORMATION.
Every poll in the WORLD, EVERY SINGLE ONE, uses sampling weights to weight or express the importance of the value from each individual. That's what they did here, I'm sure.
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@ dataguyx
Right, I think some misunderstand waht over sampling is.
If I ask 100 african-americans and 50 whites about an issue on race, I'm simply asking more african-americans os that I can get a more accurate picture of how african americans feel.
When calculating the poll, each african-america answer is calculated in respect to the african-american population at large as are the white votes, giving a very accurate interpretation.
If I were polling to find out how the Hagee endorsement hurt or helped John McCain, I might over sample the Catholic vote.
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This Is About Dems
Not the general.
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It's not all Dems
Not when you look at head to head match ups with McCain.
In that respect, what would be the point of polling just Democrats?
I should hope that if they had only polled Democrats, our candidates would have fared better.
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Exactly correct
"If I were polling to find out how the Hagee endorsement hurt or helped John McCain, I might over sample the Catholic vote."
There are two phases to poll estimation. Phase 1: Estimation of subgroup belief. Phase 2: Estimation of population preference or belief. Subgroups are OFTEN over-sampled, to get a more accurate estimate of the beliefs of that subgroup. However when we form the composite to represent the population as a whole, the results from the subgroup will be weighted to fairly represent their proportion in the population as a whole.
This happens with AA, hispanics, etc. It also happens with Dems and Republicans. Very often, the poll determines if you are a Dem or Rep, and computes a subgroup belief there. Then, the beliefs are weighted to show the population as a whole.
This is one IMPORTANT reason why polls often differ. It is not just the simple sampling difference, where different polls get different results because the people are different. Rather, the sampling weights indicating proportion of population are different. Even the same poll results in hands of different pollsters could result in different conclusions.
That's why I call it a black art. It's not scientific in the standard statistical sense, because you incorporate the population weights, which are also unknown and estimated. The process involves weighting estimates with other weights which are also estimates. Somewhat convoluted.
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KateTex, HRC dead-enders, et al...
If you (or your, heh, "statistician friend") don't care for the NBC/WSJ poll, perhaps you'd prefer the PEW Research Center's? Enjoy:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/779/obama-weathers-the-wright-storm-clinton-faces-credibility-problem
There's been no small amount of speculation regarding the attitudes of certain "white ethnics", those whom we might refer to as the "Ferraro Block". As PEW confirms:
"Obama has a highly favorable image among Democratic voters, including white Democrats. But while Obama's personal image is more favorable than Clinton's, certain social beliefs and attitudes among older, white, working-class Democratic voters are associated with his lower levels of support among this group.
"In particular, white Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.
"Less educated and older white Democrats, who have not backed Obama in most primary elections, hold these values more commonly than do other Democrats.
But even with these racist-jingoist-ignorant Ferraro Block voters (who of course favor Hillary), PEW finds: "Obama maintains a 49%-to-39% advantage over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, which is virtually unchanged from than the 49%-to-40% lead he held among Democrats in late February. Obama and Clinton continue to enjoy slight advantages over John McCain in general election matchups among *all* registered voters." (Emphasis added)
Not only does PEW find that Obama is favored by a statistically significant majority of Democrats and is otherwise as electable as Clinton among all registered voters (Democrat, Republican, and Independent), he also enjoys higher positive/lower negative ratings among Clinton supporters than Clinton does among Obama supporters. In fact, Obama has higher positives/lower negatives among all voters, regardless of party affiliation. Very telling, that.
So, we can wring our hands over Obama's non-appeal to the Ferraro Block of racist, jingoist, ignorant voters that somehow still identify as Democrat. Or we can revel in the fact that the racist, jingoist ignorant voters are too small a faction to derail his appeal among the majority of Democrats and all other voters.
Isn't it sad that this finding is something you can't cheer?
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@Xufapemu
Ah yes. And here are the condescending remarks.
Everything I said in my earlier posts is true, regardless of whether or not I believe
Hillary is going to win. ObamaCultists are an ungracious, aggressive lot. And
it IS a cult. Period. Not all of his supporters are cultists, however there are
many who eat, sleep, drink and fart Obama. Their psyches are wildly out of balance.
FYI: I didn't want Hillary to run for President because I didn't think she could win
but once she did get in I supported her. And still do.
Please Xufapemu, tend to your own business.