Re: [Marxism] No bounce for Kerry

["Eli Stephens" <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> In Boston, Democrats didn't blast the decision to invade Iraq, in part
> because Kerry voted to authorize the war. The percentage of voters who say
> it was a mistake to go to war actually dropped after the convention, to 47%
> compared with 50% before.

I'm sorry, this is just nonsense. Leaving entirely aside Jose's previously
expressed (quite a while ago) analysis of the inACCURACY of polling data,
the kind of data being cited above (and in all these discussions of the
"bounce") don't even lie outside the PRECISION of the data. It is simply
unscientific to say that "the percentage of voters dropped" from 50% to 47%,
when the margin of error on these polls is 4%. That's plus or minus 4%, by
the way, which means that a 50-47 result could "actually" be attained from a
population whose "real" sentiment was 46-51 (or in fact, even more, those
margins of error are just the 95% confidence level, which means there's a 5%
chance it's even less precise).

So can we PLEASE refrain from republishing such nonsense?

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