Friday, June 15, 2018

The GOP's Faux-Fairness Flimflamery



Gary McCoy - [POLL] Obama 'worst president' since World War II | USA Today

I think he finally found a legacy he can keep.

Muhammad Rasheed - The graph results for Best and Worst presidents looks like the majority of people polled were young conservatives.

Gary McCoy - @Muhammad, "looks like"? One could just as easily say that for any poll reflecting positively for Obama, that, "the majority of people polled were young liberals."

Muhammad Rasheed - It's true. That's one of the traits of opinion polls. You can tell who they talked to when soliciting "off-the-street" opinions based on what the data analysis shows.

The article headline gives the skewed impression that they polled a more evenly diverse group, but the actual results analysis shows otherwise:

"Best president? REAGAN!!! Worst president? That Kenyan Moozlem!!!"

Gary McCoy - I'm sorry, but simply saying, "... the actual results analysis shows otherwise." does not make it so. What proof do you have that it was anything but a fair survey sampling?

Muhammad Rasheed - The proof is that it was specifically a "public opinion poll" (conducted by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in fact), and opinion polls fall along ideological/partisan lines because that's how people's raw opinions fall. The sample of people polled reflected the same demographic bias of the results.

Gary McCoy - Uh, how do you KNOW the sample of people polled "reflected the same demographic bias of the result."? Unless you were in on the polling, you DON'T know what the sampling demographic was. And by your blanket statement, there is NO survey whose results are accurate. And that includes those reflecting favorably on Obama.

Muhammad Rasheed - Gary wrote: "Uh, how do you KNOW the sample of people polled 'reflected the same demographic bias of the result.'?"

Because that's the nature of "opinion."

Gary McCoy - Okay, then I was correct. There is no poll which you believe is accurate. The idea of a survey is to take a random sampling which based upon statistics, reflects the opinions of the greater population without asking every single person.

Muhammad Rasheed - In the case of this here random sampling, the majority of those polled happened to lean conservative with an anti-Obama bias. The USA Today article writers took that poll and wrote a headline that gave the impression that the sampling was more evenly balanced.

Muhammad Rasheed - A more accurate headline would have read, "[POLL] GOP still thinks Obama worst president ever."

Gary McCoy - The idea of a random sampling is that it inherently produces accurate results. Unless you were to ask the people at a Hillary rally if they think Trump is doing a good job.

I didn't see anywhere in the article where they reveal exactly the sampled group. Where do you get your information that "the majority of those polled happened to lean conservative with an anti-Obama bias"?

Muhammad Rasheed - lol The analysis of the polling results of the sample group's opinions revealed that the majority of them -- that thought Obama the worst president -- were conservative with an anti-Obama bias.

Muhammad Rasheed - Opinions reflect ideological, political, and cultural biases.

Gary McCoy - M. Rasheed wrote: "A true random sampling will be a toss up as to what percentage of different demographics you get. If this one was truly random then they just happened to grab a bunch of Tea partiers or whatever in the mix."

In other words, you won't accept the credibility of any poll unless it mirrors your own opinions. Sorry, you don't get to pick the sampling group.

If the survey was truly biased, as you're making out, then it would have been, "100% of those surveyed say Obama is the worst president". But it didn't. Proving you wrong.

Muhammad Rasheed - I'm not saying the sampling was deliberately biased. I'm saying the results of the opinion poll, in showing the opinions of those polled, revealed their inherent ideological/political/cultural biases.

It's an opinion poll, Gary. It asks people what their opinions are regarding a specific topic. Opinions are biased by their nature. The demographic that we know fr sure who believe that Obama was the worst president were those who voted for Trump.

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