Comments on: Is the African-American/Prop 8 Exit Poll Connection Viable? http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable a cultural forum in ever-shifting standing Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:37:11 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: The Next Stage of the Prop 8 Battle | The GWIRE http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/comment-page-1/#comment-249456 Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:37:11 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=9245#comment-249456 […] support from the African American voting population that was turned out by Barack Obama, and questions about how viable that connection is.  There is also, of course, the ongoing question about whether […]

]]> By: SU http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/comment-page-1/#comment-248803 Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:28:04 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=9245#comment-248803 http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#CAI01

I believe this is the data referred to in the article.

]]> By: SU http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/comment-page-1/#comment-248802 Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:26:13 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=9245#comment-248802 Though the sample size may be sufficient, age and county of residence seem to be major factors in how the state voted. Though all other racial group vote percentages were broken down by age, the exit poll does not give African American vote percentages by age. A poll heavily weighted toward older voters may generate a dramatically skewed result. (59% of whites over 65 voted yes, 67% of whites 18-29 voted no). Prop 8 won in all but coastal counties and a few bordering Nevada. From which counties were the African American respondents? Poll doesn’t say. Are the 225 or so African Americans polled truly representative of the 1.1 million that voted? Maybe, but, I’m not convinced.

]]> By: Edward Champion http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/comment-page-1/#comment-248671 Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:58:32 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=9245#comment-248671 Look, I understand a Bayesian interval in relation to ONE binary value. Perhaps someone who HAS a clue might be able to tell me how you can use it to draw an accurate conclusion about two separate sets of data. Is this related to fiducial inference? Can any of you apparent wizards explain THAT? Or direct me to a helpful book on the subject whereby I can then see the light? Thanks.

]]> By: Escuerd http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/comment-page-1/#comment-248670 Sat, 08 Nov 2008 21:31:12 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=9245#comment-248670 Thank you, MH.

I’m glad to see that there’s someone on here who understands how statistics works and doesn’t think that a sample needs to be a large fraction of the population it’s drawn from to be good enough for a reasonable confidence interval.

That shockingly common misunderstanding is one of my pet peeves, and it really shows when someone has no clue about statistics.

]]> By: Sharon http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/comment-page-1/#comment-248645 Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:55:55 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=9245#comment-248645 As an African American heterosexual female, it really bothers me that a group’s constitutional right could be stripped from them. What’s next? Once you start changing the constitution, you leave room for other things to occur. Being a part of an oppressed race, I really have a hard time understanding how the AA community could place the same restrictions on another group. It’s nobody’s business who people go to bed with at night or who they wake up with in the morning. I’m saddened and disheartened by this. I especially don’t trust the right wing nuts who use religion as an excuse to brainwash people. When a religious group tells you that voting for Obama will bring a holocaust, it’s time to rethink who guides us in life. I hope the gay and lesbian community fight until the very end and succeed because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

]]> By: Susan http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/comment-page-1/#comment-248644 Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:51:31 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=9245#comment-248644 Polls are generally pretty lousy, so I always take them with a grain of salt. I find the idea of a connection in this case viable. The majority of African-Americans are church goers, and the bible thumpers were behind Prop 8. Then again, you could say the same about white people and Hispanics. There’s a connection, but they’re not the only group to blame. Every group seems to have a problem accepting gay marriage. Even our new president stands behind the whole “separate but equal” excuse (although that could be for political reasons).

People can’t legislate GLBT people out of existence, which seems to be the underlying goal. Someday the bigots will die out and there’ll be equality. How this inequality manages to be legal while we have the 1st amendment is beyond me.

]]> By: MH http://www.edrants.com/is-the-african-americanprop-8-exit-poll-connection-viable/comment-page-1/#comment-248642 Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:33:12 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=9245#comment-248642 http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

To get a confidence interval of +/-3% (a number I just pulled out of my hat), confidence level 95%, in a population of 10,000,000, you need a sample size of 1067 people. To get to 99%, you only need to get another 800 or so people.

You don’t actually need to poll a sizable fraction of the electorate to get an accurate poll. Hence why polls are even EVER used – if you had to poll 25% of the electorate, you might as well just have an entire election.

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