From: king@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Jonathan King)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.marrou
Subject: Biased samples are...biased! (was Re: Media coverage for Marrou/Lord)
Summary: you can't undo a biased/self-selected sample, or justify post hoc.
Keywords: sampling, error, bias, self-selection, rationalization, election
Date: 6 Oct 92 23:00:03 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of California, San Diego

(I've *dramatically* cut down the Newsgroups line, since my comments would
be irrelevant for most of them.)

rcollins@encore.com (Roger Collins) writes:
>[someboody else left unattested by R. Collins writes:]
>>|> "For months, CompuServe Information Service has excluded
>>|> Marrou from the list of candidates in their on-line
>>|> poll," remarked Dasbach. "Finally, in late August, he
>>|> was included. The most recent results (9/11/92); Bush
>>|> 43%, Clinton 42%, Marrou 5%, Someone Else 3%, No One 1%,
>>|> Undecided 5%."

First, an interjection: Sure, it makes more sense to list all of the
likely candidates in your poll, but if you are polling from a
self-selected sample of a subpopulation that doesn't at all represent
the population of interest, then statistical fastidiousness has
already gone way out the window.  This poll, by itself, is completely
useless as a projection of the sentiment of likely voters.

>lester@naomi.b23b.ingr.com (Les Bartel) writes:
>>Keep in mind that CompuServe users and computer users in general
>>are different from those people who don't use computers in many
>>subtle and not so subtle ways.  I would venture to guess that
>>most CompuServe users are white-collar workers, and very few are
>>blue-collar workers.  This could show up as a strong bias in the
>>stats you quote as opposed to the true national opinion which
>>is best interpreted at the polls.
>
>>Stats are useful tools, but one must be very careful to understand
>>any biases that may be present.
>
>I think the bias is in how informed this group (Compuserve users) is
>on the Libertarian Party.  It shows that where people know about LP,
>they vote LP.

Oh, PLEASE.  Yup, that's got to be the *only* difference here, you bet.
Compuserve users are not only more likely to be white-collar, as the
above poster suggests, but they are more likely to be a great number of
other things than the average voter, such as:

more likely to be white
more likely to be male
more likely to own a home
more likely to own a modem
more likely to be employed
more likely to live in a suburb
more likely to have a college education
more likely to have majored in a technical field [?true?]
more likely to have won with the gnome fighter in Moria
more likely to decide to participate in silly on-line polls
...etc.

With all these dozens of biases floating around, choosing any one of
them as the root cause of Marrou's collosal 5% share in this
head-count is truly weird.

>I have read that 25% of the country agrees with the LP philosophy
>without any persuasion, and it's obvious that none of the other 3
>candidates are libertarian (little-o).  Therefore, I don't think it
>would be unreasonable to expect, if given the same exposure as the other
>3 in national debates, for Marrou to garnish a significant showing.

What?

That first sentence is a real wild one.  I have read that unbridled
Libertarianism will make the land flow with milk and honey, but I
don't believe that one, either.  Without a closer look at this alleged
opinion poll, I find it really hard to believe.

And maybe I'm missing something about Little-L libertarianism, but I
would have thought this would be something like a matter of degree,
and that this could be assessed by looking at their ideas.  


And, hey, one of the candidates is a pot-smoking, pro-choice former
draft dodger (government has no right to force the individual to
serve...) who is now the popular governor of a right-to-work state
with wide-open environmental laws which has one of the lowest per
capita state and local tax burdens in the country. :-)  [NOTE:  this
is a joke.  I have been made painfully aware at great length by many
people that there is more to [Ll]ibertarianism than this.]

And as far as what a "significant showing" is, I have no clue as to
how you would define that one.  (Please don't believe these goofs who
try to make points about margins of error and the reality of support
for nth party candidates for n > 1; I don't know what planet they are
coming from, either.)

>And that 25% should go up as the socialist system continues to bring our
>economy to its knees.

Heh.  'Socialism'.  So that's what we've been practicing here.  And
here I was almost willing to accept the premise that Libertarians were
well-informed.  :-)  Seriously, it might be interesting to take a look
at some of the other governments and societies in the world (and their
levels of economic success] before you make such sweeping statements.

Meanwhile, lets get back to a real topic:

which states do the Libertarians expect to do best in this election,
and why?

jking
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections