Question to Ponder: If Fox News is the most widely viewed cable

[izzybeans]

news channel then why are the sample sizes of their opinion polls consistently much smaller than CNN or MSNBC? I don't have an answer but the difference in web traffic must have an explanation.

Fox: N= approx. 4000
http://www.foxnews.com/foxfan/registration.html?url=http://www.foxnews.com/foxfan/index.html

scroll down-poll is on the right in the middle of the page.


CNN: N=approx. 24,000

http://www.cnn.com/

poll on bottom right

MSNBC: Question of the day N=ranges from 10,000 -20,000 a day
current poll at 3,000-and it is hard to find because its not on the homepage

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080261/

[Clark2008]

1. Because their followers don't read

online, books, newspapers - anywhere. They prefer to be spoon-fed diatribes by Sean Insanity and Bill "I saved Spongebob with a loofah" O'Reilly.

[izzybeans]

2. All the people at the Freep don't wonder over to faux news?

[Clark2008]

3. They might, but the vast majority of Faux viewers don't. n/t

[izzybeans]

6. Do Nielsen ratings provide demos on such things?

[Stevious]

4. Viewer Demographics

The average Faux News "viewer" is probably a Joe Sixpack, armchair warrior type... who can operate a TV remote, but still thinks the internet(s) is something Al Gore invented, and so they stay away.

[izzybeans]

5. Do we know that's true?

The demographics should explain it, but 20,000 spread between CNN and Fox when Fox's "viewership" dwarfs the others. I'm not sure it does.

[Clark2008]

7. Thank you - that was the point I was attempting to make.

:thumbsup:

[izzybeans]

11. I got your point I just wonder if its too easy of an answer.

I understand well the nature of demographics and polling. I just don't think the sample sizes make any sense.

Draconianism works for me as an explanation, which would partially reflect demographics, but I wondered how much of this can be explained by those two things alone.

[KharmaTrain]

8. Polling Fun & Games

A couple thoughts...

1.) Faux uses its own in-house polling service that doesn't have either the budget or resources that CNNServative (Gallup) or MSGOP (NYT) have...thus a smaller number of people called/sampled.

2.) Yes, Demographics...they don't care what people who don't watch them care...they want to prop up their own conclusions/image and only care to reach out/study/skew the Male 25-49 demo...also looks good when they pitch advertisers who buy by the demo, not the content...ESPN, Faux, FX, Sci-Fi...very little "polling" isn't designed for some sort of marketing.

3.) Time...getting a huge sample...especially in the age of voice mail...is getting more difficult...and another reason many polls skew older as those are people who still actually answer phones. Cellphone people are still ignored as well (partly since many polling companies don't want to pay for your cell time).

On a time sensetive poll...like something overnight...you're not going to see as large a poll as one conducted over the period of a week (most magazines do this).

My .02 (.01 Canadian)

[izzybeans]

10. It doesn't take huge resources to post a question on a website.

I think the polls I posted are a bit more comparable than that. Time isn't a factor given that MSNBC's is a question of the day, CNN's changes pretty much daily, as does Fox New's.


If it were an opinion poll taken over the phone then resources come into play, but online polling reflects web traffic more than anything else.

I guess I was wondering if there viewership was as large as we are told it is. Just a question that came to mind as I checked on the polls today.

[KharmaTrain]

12. Need Anything More Be Said About Online Polls?

I don't think I've played with one in 5 years. Besides the fact that anyone with a good macro program can blast these things or Freep or DU them, it's also not reflective of the entire universe of viewers...a lot of people still don't have regular access to a computer...and for many, it's a bother to go to the site.

When I worked in radio, we had a rule of thumb that one call on a talk show represented 10% of the audience and one call on a music request line was 1%. As a very succesful manager told me "if you live off what the listeners say, you'll end up being one..."

[izzybeans]

13. I'm not looking for accuracy reports.

and don't care what the results were. I was asking a question about the sample size. macroblasters aside, something doesn't add up.

[KharmaTrain]

14. There Is No Accuracy

It's all popularity, timing and being aware of the website. That's a lot of work for someone lying on the couch just flipping across the dial. I sure don't pay attention to a network's poll question, but it sure will be blasted here or in Freeperland. I don't get your point.

If you're trying to tie a network's popularity on how many people take it's online poll, you're mixing different worlds. Honestly, the only numbers that matters to the corporate media are the one with dollar bills attached.

[izzybeans]

15. How do you mean?

Not very many people pay attention to these polls when reading the "news"-and I'm one of them. But enough of them do to register over 20,000 votes on a daily basis, but not at Fox. Duing a poll only works for the small local cites. Duers and freepers who used these macroblasters barely even register. My point was simply mathematical. Is it possible to explain these differences in sample size by something other than demographics, or the belief that republicans don't have computers. All things else being equal the probability that someone clicks send on a poll should be nearly the same on each website. Given that all things aren't equal-MSNBC's poll isn't on the homepage, Fox News claims to have ratings vastly greater than the others, and assuming their demographics aren't appalachain mountain people who don't have a computer, which they aren't etc. Why such consistently small N on the poll?

It was a thought excercise, I wondered if people could explain away the difference. If they could then I wasn't going to waste my time questioning the "accuracy" of the numbers of Fox viewers. It was just such a large discrepency( and one that seems to be pretty consistent) that I thought it was worth mentioning.


Point: are Fox's audience numbers fudged like everything else about them? Is this a way to find out? I don't know. Just a question to ponder. Nothing more.

[UdoKier]

9. Maybe most of the trogs who watch Fox aren't yet online...

Or maybe when they try to use a computer, they pick up the mouse and say into it, "Computer..." a la Scotty in Star Trek IV.