Polling
gregladen | October 20, 2016Updated to include polls through Oct 26th (AM, more polls later in the day on the 26th will be added at the next update):
Updated, 25 October AM
As I expected, and demonstrated much to the consternation of everyone, the ever widening double digit lead of Clinton over Trump in an increasing number of polls meme is a falsehood. Here is the latest graphic using the same approach as described below, but updated to reflect additional polls.
Rather than a widening, or even consistent, gap, or a gap that is double digit, we see Clinton continuing to lead, but pretty much in the same way that she…
gregladen | February 28, 2016You may be asking yourself the same question, especially if, like me, you vote on Tuesday, March 1st.
For some of us, a related question is which of the two is likely to win the nomination.
If one of the two is highly likely to win the nomination, then it may be smart to vote for that candidate in order to add to the momentum effect and, frankly, to end the internecine fighting and eating of young within the party sooner. If, however, one of the two is only somewhat likely to win the nomination, and your preference is for the one slightly more likely to lose, then you better vote for the…
denialism | April 5, 2013And it may even be more when one considers that there is likely non-overlap between many of these conspiracies. It really is unfortunate that their isn't more social pushback against those that express conspiratorial views. Given both the historical and modern tendency of some conspiracy theories being used direct hate towards one group or another (scratch a 9/11 truther and guess what's underneath), and that they're basically an admission of one's own defective reasoning, why is it socially acceptable to espouse conspiracy theories? They add nothing to discussion, and instead hijack…
mikethemadbiologist | July 21, 2011Or more accurately, it's the revolt of the liberals. Personally, it's none of my business whom Republicans nominate for president, but, to me, Romney seems to be a strong electoral candidate (albeit one disliked by the Tea Party/theopolitical base). Why?
Liberals.
Hunh? Let me explain.
I've been talking to liberals who have non-overlapping circles of friends in Virginia, one of the closely contested swing states (thanks to Google+, the ability to use the phrase "circle of friends" is rapidly drawing to a close. But I digress). As I far as I can tell, there are enough liberals who would…
mikethemadbiologist | June 2, 2011...don't understand fractions. A recent Gallup poll asked people what percentage of Americans were gay and lesbian. The results? 52 percent estimated that twenty percent or more of the population is gay or lesbian:
Keep in mind that most estimates put the lesbian and gay population at around three percent. While the Gallup pollsters and other commentators ascribe this to increasing acceptance, I think it's something more basic--a lot of people don't really instinctively make the link between fractions and percentages:
The arithmetic gap is the most obvious one: profs over a certain age (…
mikethemadbiologist | April 30, 2011Or at least, antivaxxer idiocy isn't correlated with political leanings. Last week, in response to a post by Chris Mooney I argued that liberals weren't more likely to refuse vaccination, despite the stereotype that vaccination denialism is more prevalent among the left (that's always struck me as a 'limousine liberal' type of canard). Kevin Drum, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, and Josh Rosenau all chimed in. Chris Mooney, with an assist from Brendan Nyhan, discusses two more polls that indicate political affiliation has little to do with vaccination denialism. First, the response to anti-…
mikethemadbiologist | August 12, 2010By way of Digby, I came across this poll of white attitudes towards various ethnicities (including whites) based on self-identified Tea Party support (note: respondents were only from four states, NV, MO, GA, and NC). One of things that struck me while looking at the data (pdf and pdf) was the extent to which whites who identified strongly with the Tea Party didn't trust other whites.
72% of skeptics of the Tea Party thought other whites were trustworthy, while Tea Partiers thought only 49% of whites were trustworthy (p = 0.0022). The other significant result, and which is puzzling is…
mikethemadbiologist | April 15, 2010I'll have more to say about the rally tomorrow (short version: as was said in more civilized times, meh.). But I think it's worth noting that the Tea Partyers are even more wingnutty than Digby thinks:
1) The NY Times poll graphic compares Tea Buggers with all respondents. But keep in mind that the real Americans Tea Buggers are 18 percent of the total sample. So....
2) Race, not in the form of lynching, but in the belief that blacks are social parasites is a huge difference. When asked, "In recent years, has too much been made of the problems facing black people?", 52% of Tea Buggers…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2010I'll return to the Research 2000 poll I discussed Wednesday, and also talk about this Gallup poll Digby discusses (and I think misinterprets), because I think we have to really think about the data we're collecting--and the questions in those polls really are different in quality from each other. But first, the 16rRNA.
Something that's applicable to many fields is that you have to understand the limitations of your data, not just the strengths. In addition, you also imagine what the data would look like given certain outcomes: given scenario X, we would expect to see A, and given scenario…
razib | July 8, 2009Over at Secular Right I break down attitudes toward a host of issues as a function of class and party identification. It is interesting to see the issues where class matters more than party, and those where party matters more than class, and where one segment is an outlier. Below the fold are a few questions of possible specific interest to ScienceBlogs readers.
Lower = No high school to some college
Higher = Bachelor's degree or higher
Repub or lean Repub
Dem or lean Dem
Lower
Higher
Lower
Higher
Humans evolved from animals
29.7
47.1
43.7
79.6
Will not eat genetically…
razib | April 9, 2009The GSS has a variable, GENEGOO2, with an N ~ 2,500, that asks:
Some people say that genetic testing may cause trouble. Others think it is a wonderful medical advance. Based on what you know, do you think genetic testing will do more harm than good or more good than harm?
Below the fold are charts which show attitudes based on politics, highest degree attained, vocab score, attitude toward Bible, sex, religion, income, socioeconomic index and race.
Low income at the left:
Low socioeconomic index at the left:
razib | March 10, 2009There are several questions regarding speech which which have huge sample sizes in the GSS:
SPKRAC (Allow Racist to Speak), SPKHOMO (Allow Homosexual to Speak), SPKCOM (Allow Communist to Speak) and SPKATH (Allow Anti-Religionist to Speak) all have sample sizes of 53,000. This means that one can look for trends at a relatively granular scale. I decided to check how people lined up as a function of Age, belief in God, political views and intelligence (vocabulary). Lots of charts below.
A key:
1) Age goes from 18-89, left to right.
2) God goes from (left to right) atheist, to agnostic, to…
razib | March 9, 2009The American Religious Identification Survey 2008 is out. It is complementary to the Pew Religious Landscape Survey, and seems to confirm its findings. But its main advantage is that there was a survey in 1990 and 2001, so you have three points in time from which to observe trends.
As you can see, the number of atheists & agnostics tracks the general increase in the number with no religion, it's doubled in the past generation. But, though only 2% of the population identifies as atheist & agnostic, around ~10% of the population holds to beliefs which are atheistic or agnostic.…
razib | March 6, 2009Some have argued that the Culture Wars are in abatement. Out of curiosity I checked the attitudes toward abortion on demand and homosexuality in the GSS broken down by age & political orientation. The ABANY and HOMOSEX variables. Below are the percentages who agree with abortion on demand as well as the contention that there is nothing wrong with homosexual relations.
Yes To Abortion On Demand
Extremely Liberal
Liberal
Slightly Liberal
Moderate
Slightly Conservative
Conservative
Extremely Conservative
65 or older
57
50
34
32
32…
razib | February 28, 2009There are nearly 500 complete responses to the survey from last week. Here's a CSV file of the results. Below the fold are the frequencies as well as N's. I might report some trends in the data, but a lot of it is predictable. People who only read ScienceBlogs GNXP are way more liberal than those who do not.
Reads....
Only GNXP ScienceBlogs
Only GNXP Classic
Both
No Answer
1.83
2.08
2.87
Far Left
13.76
4.17
2.87
Left
28.44
5.56
11.48
Center Left
16.51
10.42
15.31
Center
8.26
6.94
11.00
Center Right
2.75
10.42
11.00
Right
1.83
13.19
10.05
Far Right
0.92
9.03
5.74…