Monday, November 21, 2005

Diageo/Hotline: Worthless Poll on Republican Presidential Candidates

Today, Financial Dynamics released a poll it conducted from November 11 to November 15 regarding Republican aspirants to the presidency in 2008. These are the results:

"Suppose the 2008 Republican presidential primary were held today, for whom would you support if the candidates were [see below]?" If "All": "If you absolutely had to choose, which one person would you support?" Names rotated. N=326 Republican voters, MoE ± 5.4%.

Rudy Giuliani 22%
Condoleezza Rice 22%
John McCain 21%
Jeb Bush 11%
Newt Gingrich 6%
Bill Frist 3%
None (vol.) 3%
Unsure 11%

Betty the Crow and other bloggers are receiving this poll as if it tells us a great deal, but I don't buy the hype. Look at the margin of error: a 95% confidence that any single actual result for the Republican electorate lies within +/- 5.4 percentage points of the reported result for the D/H sample -- of only 326 Republicans! Jeb Bush's actual support among American Republicans could reasonably (within social science standards) be as high as 16.4%, and John McCain's actual support might reasonably fall as low as 15.6%. With those two overlapping, I cannot trust that there's a significant difference in support between them.

I know that we're all aching for information that tells us something about the 2008 race. But sometimes no information is better than bad information.

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