Behind The Numbers In The Ohio Poll

Ohio is a swing state that Governor Romney needs to win in order to defeat President Obama in November. A group called Public Policy Polling predicts a win by President Obama in Ohio by 5 points, but when you look closely at the poll, the numbers don’t add up.

This article is based on two sources–a post at Hot Air by Ed Morrissey and a post at DaTechGuyBlog by Pete DaTechGuy.

Pete reminds us that women are more likely to vote for President Obama. The poll sampled 54% women and 46% men. The poll also sampled 41% Democrats, 37% Republicans, and 22% Independents. Ed Morrissey points out that the 37% Republicans matches the Republican 2010 turnout, but that the Democrat turnout in the 2010 midterm election was 36%–not 41%.

Pete also posted the following numbers:

https://www.rightwinggranny.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/crosstab-4-results.png

Pete describes the problem with these numbers:

Now that’s kind of odd isn’t it? this crosstab suggest that you have a 42% of the people in the poll self identifying themselves as conservative in a poll that is 37% Republican, yet only 28% call themselves liberal? Are we to believe that ALL of republicans are Conservatives with some spill over to the middle or is it more likely that our liberal friends, like their fellows in the media don’t see their own biases and believe themselves moderate?

The bottom line here is simple. Anyone can lie with statistics (or polls). All you have to do is carefully choose the people you poll. The only poll that really matters is the one on election day when voters vote. Until then, we need to ignore a lot of what the media tells us is true. The important thing is that everyone get out and vote ONCE on election day. I believe that Governor Romney will win an honest election.

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