FORTY-EIGHT percent of republicans say.......

[SoCalDem]

Let's look at the numbers before we get all hyped up..

MSNBC said that only 20% of people surveyed even identify themselves as republicans..

If we pretend that there is a population of 100 people, and 20 of them admit to republican leanings, that 48% works out to be NINE people out of the 100..

Of course, on its face, the polls are only about the people who were actually reached by phone, and who actually picked up the phone, and who agreed to "answer a few questions", and who did not get thoroughly disgusted with the stupid questions & did not just hang up.

Now think about how many people no longer even have land-line phones, and about all the folks who mute the phone & have everything go to voice mail, or who screen calls by listening to who's calling before they even get up out of their chair, and remember too, that there are rules about when pollsters can even call...how many people work such wacky hours, that they are rarely even home.

Pollsters need for their polls to be exciting, interesting and ground-breaking, so they "juice-up" their questions, so the news venues will pick out their questions to report on, thereby sending more customers to them. many polls these days are actually tied to news venues (print & tv), so their polls are automatically chosen over others whose results may say something entirely different because of the wording of thew questions. Some pollsters ask the same questions in their own polls, just worded differently.

and ponder this:

http://www.informatics-review.com/FAQ/reading.html

Well-designed materials provide information that is easy for audience members to understand and to relate to their own interests and needs. Research tells us that to communicate effectively with a general audience in the U.S., we need to write at a 6th-8th grade reading level.

1992

The National Adult Literacy Survey, National Center for Education Statistics


Nearly 50% of the Americans surveyed cannot read well enough to find a single piece of information in a short publication, nor can they make low level inferences based on what they read

1993

The National Adult Literacy Survey, Educational Testing Service


75% of adult Americans with chronic health conditions scored in the lowest two literacy levels assessed

1994

Pediatrics, 3-94


The average reading level of American parents of young children is 7th or 8th grade, but 80% of pediatric materials for parents are written at the 10th grade level or above

1995

Emory University/UCLA study, reported in JAMA, 12-95


41.6% of American patients could not comprehend directions for taking medication on an empty stomach

26% were unable to understand information regarding when their next appointment was scheduled

50.5% could not understand a standard informed consent form

1996
"Physical Assessment: The Pharmacist and the Self-medicating Patient," Drug Newsletter


About 20% of the US population are functionally illiterate; for some subsets of our population, that rises to 40%.

1999

Education levels in the U.S.


About one in every four Americans (25%) is a high school dropout

About half (45%) have gone to college for some period of time, but fewer than one in six (15%) have a college degree

[RKP5637]

1. I find polls misleading and often I question the sampling source and the number. A good ...

pollster can, of course, get any results they desire. Then the media is more than willing to push any reporting that increases viewership and their bottom line. At which point do polling results become fulfillment of a desired shift in public attitude. I also find the reading and comprehension level in America frighting and troublesome.

[damntexdem]

2. Baa?

Or oink oink?