Why more of us watch Fox than CNN, Part 3
CNN has determined that
Activists in the Tea Party movement tend to be male, rural, upscale, and overwhelmingly conservative, according to a new national poll.
Yep, just a bunch of angry white men. (Note that they don’t report the racial make-up of the respondents but we all know that rural, rich conservatives are all white, right? Right?) The poll numbers came from a telephone survey in which 124 (of 1,023) respondents indicated “they had taken active steps to support the Tea Party, such as donating money or attending a rally.”
A whopping 124 respondents and CNN takes polls like this seriously? You have got to be kidding. Really, you don’t have to be a statistician to know that in a country of 300 million, a political movement which has drawn tens of thousands of rally attendees (and the ire of the mainstream media) cannot possibly be accurately described by 124 people. They claim a sampling error of 9 points. As a mathematician I find that claim highly dubious, but even if accurate no self-respecting pollster would stake any credibility on that error. Interestingly enough, when I revisited the article, the complete poll data was no longer available.
This is neither responsible, unbiased journalism nor reliable statistical work. But it’s good enough for CNN to run it as a headline on their Politics front page.