Chicago is “capital of the Democratic Party”

19 comments June 17th, 2008

Does THIS DISTINCTION make Illinois as a whole an even bluer state than it already was?

What effect will it have on down-ballot races in Illinois? Does it diminish the election prospects of Republicans in this state?

Questions, questions. 

How’s your choice for president doing among working-class, left-handed redheads?

1 comment June 17th, 2008

There’s been a lot of talk among the chattering classes in recent days about John McCain’s lead over Barack Obama among suburban white women in the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll (HERE).

In feigned tones of expertise, the pundits have analyzed the numbers and come to their conclusions: McCain’s appeal to these white women is due to…blah, blah, blah. What Obama needs to do is…blah, blah, blah.

All this wastest breath is just further proof that more than a few members of the so-called political cognoscenti are woefully unaware of even the fundamentals of political polling.

Follow me on this and you’ll hereafter have a greater grasp of the poll results you come across. I promise.

The people who conducted the poll at issue said that it had ”an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.” That means that there are 19 chances in 20 that the tallies of responses from every registered voter in America would come within 3.1 percentage points of those obtained from the survey’s sample of 1,000 people.

But that margin of error applies only to the overall figures — that is, the results from all the respondents.  When you start looking at the numbers for subgroups — that is, for example, blacks or whites or military vets or the college-educated or Southerners — the margin of error is considerably larger.

And when you’re talking about subgroups of subgroups, the margin of error is so wide that little or no credence should be given to the stated numbers.

In the case of how McCain and Obama are faring respectively among suburban white women (not just women, and not just white women, but suburban white women), there’s no point in even discussing the implications — especially considering that McCain’s vaunted lead in this category, according to the poll, is a scant 6 percentage points.

For all we know, Obama might actually be leading among suburban white women. Or he might be losing rather badly.  The point is, nobody knows for sure.

Pollster John Zogby is RECOMMENDING that political junkies take a breather from the polls for a while. In the interim, however,  I would suggest that folks school themselves on how to read polls. Lesson No. 1: Pay no attention to poll results for subgroups of subgroups.