Stupid Poll Reporting
Posted by Atrios
One would have to do a careful bit of research to be sure, but obviously
I'm not the only one who has noticed that slight Bush leads in polls are called "leads" while slight or even bigger leads for Kerry are labelled "ties."
The annoying thing, though, is that most people writing these stories still don't appear to understand what the margin of error implies. For a poll with an X point margin of error, the difference between the two candidates has to be, approximately (there's a slightly more accurate formula but for numbers around 50% it's close enough), 2X before the difference between them is outside the margin of error.
I'm generally happy for reporters to put things in rough lay terms that people understand. That's more important than a statistics lesson with every article. But, there should be some consistency.
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