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View Full Version : Straw Poll NH vs. Scientific Poll NH - Fun with Statistics




FluffyUnbound
07-08-2007, 04:00 PM
Some interesting facts:

New Hampshire has approximately 267,000 registered Republicans.

1% of that number is 2670 people.

182 people voted for Ron Paul at the NH straw poll you've all seen reported.

That would seem to force us to conclude one of two things:

1. Nearly 10% of the total registered Republicans who support Ron Paul in the state of NH showed up to vote in the straw poll.

-Or-

2. The "scientific" polls in NH that put Paul down at around 1% or 2% are flawed in some way.

I find #1 really, really hard to believe.

kylejack
07-08-2007, 04:04 PM
Welp, the FSP is pretty organized, so it is possible that 1) took place. There was also a message sent out by the campaign telling people to come to the picnic and bring all their friends and such. If other campaigns didn't send a message like that, that could skew it as well. Also, these straw polls tend to be people who are more informed, politically, so what that tells us is that our number one dragon to slay is still name recognition.

FluffyUnbound
07-08-2007, 04:08 PM
Welp, the FSP is pretty organized, so it is possible that 1) took place. There was also a message sent out by the campaign telling people to come to the picnic and bring all their friends and such. If other campaigns didn't send a message like that, that could skew it as well. Also, these straw polls tend to be people who are more informed, politically, so what that tells us is that our number one dragon to slay is still name recognition.

I doubt that any campaign, no matter how organized at this point, could get 10% of their total supporters in a state to attend a picnic and straw poll at this point in the process.

It's like saying that 1 in 10 Ron Paul supporters in the country was at the Des Moines event.

MozoVote
07-08-2007, 04:08 PM
I have to be objectve. That straw poll was only about 300 people out of 267,000 registered voters. If you randomly selected 300 people on several different days, and got roughly the same results, I might be willing to extrapolate something about his support.

It's not statistically meaningful. But it is easy publicity, and one situation where it's helpful that the MSM does not analyze things very closely.

shrugged0106
07-08-2007, 04:09 PM
Welp, the FSP is pretty organized, so it is possible that 1) took place. There was also a message sent out by the campaign telling people to come to the picnic and bring all their friends and such. If other campaigns didn't send a message like that, that could skew it as well. Also, these straw polls tend to be people who are more informed, politically, so what that tells us is that our number one dragon to slay is still name recognition.


while I'm thrilled with the results, we can't ignore that we certainly didnt have a representative nor statistically significant sample to work with.


I'd be a lil leary of putting that out there with non-paulites! lol

what we need to understand deeper is what proportion of NH registered republicans would already have leaned towards Dr. Paul and what proportion wouldnt. Once we knew some stats on that we could figure out a rough sample size needed to be representative. I'd make a guess at arount the 400-500 voter mark, but thats just a guess.

kylejack
07-08-2007, 04:10 PM
Also, RP has polled as high as 3% in New Hampshire.

Avalon
07-08-2007, 04:16 PM
This straw poll wasn't restricted to republicans, was it? Ron Paul certainly also appeals to democrats, third party members, and the normally apathetic/resigned/unregistered, especially in NH.