From: hooker@aristotle.ils.mwu.edu ( BOB HOOKER)
Subject: Re: Suburbs swing to Clinton in Time magazine poll
Organization: ILS
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 21:50:27 GMT

In article <1912@celia.UUCP>, steve@celia.UUCP (Steve Tyree) writes:
> 
> 
>  Answers to what questions ? I want a county that is greater than 50 percent
> independent polled. These counties might have been 20 % independent 50 %
> democratic and 30 % republican. Every county has a built in bias. If they
> use key counties to do polling, they must report the counties prior voting
> record.
>  Actually the main thrust of my post was really the following
>   How many polls are only polling selected key counties ?
>   Why arent we told that a particular poll was subjected to key county selec-
>  tion? Obviously I wasnt referring to the poll mentioned in the original post.
>  I was referring to all the other polls which do not mention how the poll data
>  was taken.

Stevie, is reading an article so beyond your abilities?  This poll of
selected counties presented data only on those selected counties and did
not generalize any statisitical inferences for the rest of the nation.

If you would have read you would have noticed;

>  	The poll showed the President trailing in all but one of five regions
> described as swing suburban counties -- Middlesex, New Jersey, De Kalb,
> Ga., Montgomery, Ohio, St. Louis, Mo., and Contra Costa, Calif

Those national polls you read about are conducted very differently.

As to you silly assertion that the counties may have been selected because
they have a republican bias,  once again read on alittle;

> 	The counties were chosen based on answers from the Clinton and Bush
> campaigns earlier this year, with at least 20 percent of the voters in
> each county considered highly independent.


Repeat;  Clinton and Bush campaign data was used.  If you still suspect
that these suburbian counties in states that went for Bush in 88 are still
50% democratic and 20% republican then you need to take a Political science
course.

Stevie,  do you really think that Time Magazine would willfully conduct a
bad poll,  for what purpose?  If the election is close, or if Bush is
winning and Time magazine knows about it yet continues to fudge the data to
make it look as if Clinton were winning,  what would happen to the
crdiability, the sales and the advertising of Time after the election?

If you suspect that any of the Major polls, Time, CNN-USA-Today, NYT, ABC,
etc.  are fudged why don't you simply request the statisitical data from
the companies that conducted them.  Then after you have this information
you, with the help of any stats major,   could find where the poll were
invalid or unrealable.  The are a number of things that would make a poll
invalid;

1. Sample Skewed  (75% black)
2. Sample to small, margin of error to great to make prodicitons. (Calling
7 people)
3.  Questions asked to not validily measure theoretical constructed being
studied.  (Asking is they like Truman and concluding this is support for
Bush)
4.  math errors.  

The ultimate test of a poll is repeatability,  and as long as the poll data
from different poll taking companies gives you the same information;  Bush
is very unpopular,  you will have a hard time proving otherwise until
someone else confirms
you.
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