{"id":3081,"date":"2008-08-15T06:50:04","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T11:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3081"},"modified":"2008-08-15T07:51:23","modified_gmt":"2008-08-15T12:51:23","slug":"whats-behind-a-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3081","title":{"rendered":"What’s Behind A Number"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I saw the lefty blogs en phalanx <\/em>crowing about the factoid that a survey of the military showed them giving to Obama by a 6:1 margin over Mac, I sat up.<\/p>\n

Wow. Gotta check this out.<\/p>\n

Zack Stephenson of MNPublius’ tone was a lot like all the rest of the leftyblogs that wrote on the subject (hmmm):<\/p>\n

\n

I thought<\/a> the Republicans were supposed to be the party of the military:<\/p>\n

According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCai<\/em>n\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wow. Given that Bush crushed <\/em>Kerry in troop donations (and votes; 4:1 with active duty troops, 3:1 with reserves) four years ago, that’d be big news, if it’s entirely true.<\/p>\n

Of course, that’s the “if” you always have to run down when it’s “news” spread simultaneously through the Sorosphere.<\/p>\n

Allahpundit:<\/p>\n

\n

The left will happily run this<\/a> up the flagpole, just as Ron Paul\u2019s supporters did last year<\/a>, despite the fact there are so many variables in play that no one\u2019s quite sure what the actual significance of it is. Is it evidence that the troops favor withdrawal? Evidence that the military\u2019s trending left? Evidence that Obama\u2019s supporters are more enthusiastic than McCain\u2019s? None of the above? All of the above?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To really know, we’d have to know a couple of things; a big one would be “sample size”, the number of troops and contributions being sampled in the “Study”.<\/p>\n

And we don’t know that. Remember that fact. We’ll come back to it shortly.
\nWe do <\/em>know a couple of things. Back to Allahpundit:<\/p>\n

\n

But again \u2014 what is it, precisely, that we\u2019re noting? The fact that Paul does disproportionately well among the same group probably means it\u2019s a war thing; it may be that there\u2019s a core group of troops who are passionately opposed to extending the occupation for whatever reason and they\u2019re willing to donate to candidates to achieve that end. That group was likely too small in 2004 to help Kerry given how recent the invasion still was, but after five years it\u2019s grown along with the rest of the anti-war tide among the electorate. Evidence, then, that most troops want out? Maybe! Except \u2026 the data doesn\u2019t specify whether the donations came mostly from Iraq or were spread out around the globe, and interestingly, the one branch where McCain leads Obama in contributions is the one most likely to see the hardest action \u2014 the [US Marine] Corps. Beyond that, the would-be McCain soldier-donor has a hurdle to clear on his way to his checkbook that the Paul and Obama donor doesn\u2019t. By kicking in to Maverick, he\u2019s making it marginally more likely that he\u2019ll continue to be deployed in the field and away from his family in the future. Even if he agrees with McCain\u2019s foreign policy, thinks we ought to finish the job in Iraq, and is willing to continue serving bravely and well to that end, it\u2019s asking a lot to ask him to pay<\/em> for the privilege.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They got their anecdotes, we have ours.<\/p>\n

Oh, wait. Remember when I said to remember the fact that we don’t know the sample size?<\/p>\n

That’s not exactly true<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Of the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors and airmen currently deployed around the entire world<\/em>, 134 — about the size of a company or a handful of platoons — have contributed to the Obama campaign. This is blockbuster news, folks.<\/p>\n

Here, let me use the original sensational headline<\/a> instead:<\/p>\n

\n

Troops Deployed Abroad Give 6:1 to Obama<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anecdotes, data…whatever. Obama Fever is obviously blitzkrieging through the ranks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Sorosphere: Distrust and Verify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I saw the lefty blogs en phalanx crowing about the factoid that a survey of the military showed them giving to Obama by a 6:1 margin over Mac, I sat up. Wow. Gotta check this out. Zack Stephenson of MNPublius’ tone was a lot like all the rest of the leftyblogs that wrote on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-campaign-08","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081","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=3081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}