Originally Posted by
20 Mile Final
Well, of course a call-in talk show represents "a sample." It's just not a statistically significant sample and, therefore, worthless as a basis of drawing correct conclusions.
The nature of a talk show inherently has a biased database and is in no way a representative sample. For instance, what percentage of Rush Limbaugh's listeners would characterize themselves as "liberals"?
What percentage of Air America Radio listeners would characterize themselves as "conservatives?"
Professional pollsters, those who make a living on trying to ferret out ACCURATE results, know that there is actually a SCIENCE to these sort of things - and call-in talk shows are certainly not scientific.
First of all, 20 mile, I see you've made 9 posts to date, so if nobody else has said it yet, welcome aboard Homer!
As to your questions:
A) This one is easy, Air America has 0% conservative, 0% liberal, 0% moderate, 0% other. Considering it went out of business.
B) 80% of Rush's 15-20M member audience is conservative according to polls. The 14-20M is the estimate of the far right Washi... far left Washington Post and its been estimated to be as high as 30M, given 600 stations and that $400M contract he signed two years ago I guess its possible. But if you go with 14-20M it's, on the low side, two or so million greater per week than the number who watch Fox News and 3 times the number of MSNBC and CNN combined, over a week. Combine CBS, ABC and NBC nightly news of about 18M for a week. All that to say its not small and could represent anywhere from 5% to 10% of the nation.
Originally Posted by
20 Mile Final
1. Did the majority of Arkansas citizens vote for Clinton for governor in 1978?
Yes! 43% in 1992, 49.2% in 1996.
2. Did the majority of Arkansas citizens vote for Clinton for governor in 1982, when he ran a second time?
Yes! And he kept the governorship for TEN YEARS until being elected president.
3. Did the state of Arkansas give all its electoral votes to Clinton in the 1992 presidential election?
Yes! Overwhelmingly so, in fact.
4. Did the state of Arkansas give all its electoral votes to Clinton in the presidential 1996 election?
Yes! It wasn't even close.
So, you're saying that most of the people in Arkansas didn't like Clinton? Very doubtful.
Surely (and don't call me Shirley), you're not saying that a call-in talk show has statistical significance.
5. (I know you were talking about Arkansas, but this is my favorite Clinton stat), Was Bill Clinton elected twice to President of the United States without ever going over 50% of the vote?
YES! 43% in 1992, 49.2% in 1996.
The combined number of Bush/Perot in 1992 was 56.3%, Dole/Perot was 49.1%.