{"id":26113,"date":"2012-02-10T12:47:31","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T18:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=26113"},"modified":"2012-02-10T12:47:31","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T18:47:31","slug":"damned-lies-and-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=26113","title":{"rendered":"Damned Lies And Statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I noted that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=26039\">the WaPo released a Presidential preference poll <\/a>that&#8230;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bucks all current polling and shows President Obama firmly in the dirver&#8217;s seat, which&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>releases no crosstabs or backup data for mere consumers to use to judge the poll&#8217;s context, parameters or validity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As I predicted, only faster, the <em>Strib <\/em>is already on board. \u00a0Joe Doakes &#8211; making a rare two-fer today &#8211; wrote to ask about\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/opinion\/otherviews\/138896234.html\">h this column by Sue Hogan at the <em>Strib<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cCatholics\u201d is a pretty broad label. Abortion advocate John Kerry claims to be Catholic and so do openly-gay parishioners at St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis as well as traditionalists who attend St. Agnes in St. Paul.<\/p>\n<p>Who did they poll?<\/p>\n<p>How was the question worded?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Silly Doakes. \u00a0Raw data is for gatekeepers.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at Hogan&#8217;s piece:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A majority of U.S. Catholics support President Obama&#8217;s decision to require religious institutions to include birth control in health insurance plans, according to two new polls.<\/p>\n<p>A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute in Washington, D.C., found that support among Catholics (58 percent) is higher than that of the American public overall (55 percent).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And who exactly is the &#8220;Public Religion Research Institute? \u00a0They describe themselves as &#8220;non-partisan&#8221;, which pretty much inevitably means &#8220;left-leaning&#8221;. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/publicreligion.org\/\">You be the judge<\/a>. \u00a0Their <a href=\"http:\/\/publicreligion.org\/research\/2012\/02\/january-tracking-poll-2012\/\">piece on the poll<\/a> doesn&#8217;t go into a lot more detail than Hogan&#8217;s puff piece.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Likewise, a Public Policy Polling survey commissioned by Planned Parenthood found that Obama&#8217;s position enjoys support from 56 percent of American voters. Of the Catholics polled, 53 percent agreed with the president.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops continues to decry the president&#8217;s decision, saying that it violates religious freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And as we&#8217;ve noted in the past, PPP voter polls trend left of reality.<\/p>\n<p>Look &#8211; I&#8217;ve expressed my skepticism that the Catholic Street really cares that much about the issue, or that the &#8220;middle management&#8221; would choose Vatican doctrine over progressivism. \u00a0It could be that the polls are accurate. \u00a0Since they seem to confirm my hunch, that&#8217;s a point in their favor [1]<\/p>\n<p>But who did they poll? \u00a0What questions did they ask?<\/p>\n<p>And, more importantlly, why aren&#8217;t they <em>teliling us <\/em>who they polled and what they asked?<\/p>\n<p>Remember &#8211; distrust but validate. \u00a0Then, usually, distrust some more.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>[1] Joking. \u00a0I&#8217;m a kidder. \u00a0I kid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I noted that the WaPo released a Presidential preference poll that&#8230;: Bucks all current polling and shows President Obama firmly in the dirver&#8217;s seat, which&#8230; releases no crosstabs or backup data for mere consumers to use to judge the poll&#8217;s context, parameters or validity. As I predicted, only faster, the Strib is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,26,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-faiths-and-their-followers","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26113"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26116,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113\/revisions\/26116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}