politics and the media 1:39 pm
Variously, discussing the recent news concerning Bristol Palin has been described as cynical, an invasion of privacy, or otherwise something that should be avoided. While there are definitely snarky, cynical posts out there, I feel that it’s a legitimate conversation–and yes, even the snarkiness of Gawker is not going to kill anyone. (more…)
the media 8:19 am
I have CNN.com in my Google Reader, though as time wears on I find myself wondering why I would do such a thing. It has articles with consistently terrible ledes and some really terrible commentary, which for some reason people are getting paid to write.
Their latest assault on the dignity of the English language is written by Roland Martin, who is apparently a nationally syndicated columnist. It is an article complaining about Valentine’s Day, which is super original! It’s pretty much the same sort of anti-Valentine’s rant you hear from anyone who has ever been burned by some of its more absurd adherents, or felt that roses are overpriced, or complained that society felt they needed a special day to demonstrate their love for their significant other. I’m not a devoted adherent but I don’t personally feel the day needs abolishing or anything. But the article bothered me, so here is my little defense of the holiday.
The article starts off with the false assertion that it was “created by rabid retailers who needed a major shopping day between Christmas and Easter in order to give people a reason to spend money.” Which is, you know, completely false!
Valentine’s Day is a Saint’s Day, for one. It became associated with romantic love in the High Middle Ages, before Christmas and Easter were shopping days. So, nice fact-checking there, Roland Martin! By which I mean ‘oh you appear to be completely wrong.‘
Then he does the traditional “I love my wife but why do I have to buy her expensive roses today?” thing. Answer? You don’t, actually! Society doesn’t really expect much of you. But it’s a day traditionally associated with romantic love, and do you really do nice things for her every day of the year? If money is tight or you want to avoid crowds, it’s still a nice time to watch a nice quiet movie with the missus and maybe have some candlelit dinner at home. Is there something wrong with having a day set aside out of the year for this? Anyone who’s likely to do it spontaneoussly is going to do it whether or not there’s a holiday on.
What really gets me is that this guy is getting paid, probably substantial sums of money, to complain about Valentine’s Day, without fact checking, inaccurately, and unoriginally–everyone who’s ever complained about it has said the same thing, and they have said it better, and without the self-righteous “I’m getting paid to do this!” sort of attitude. And it wasn’t polluting my feed reader.
politics 8:53 pm
I’m not a statistician, or even a math student. But a number of people seem to not know how to read polls, or how to understand them. Some of this is due to a lack of understanding about methodology–some of it due to paying more attention to the headlines than the polling data itself. So here is a friendly guide.
First: a poll usually contains somewhere between 1000 and 3000 respondents, randomly selected so they can get a representative sample. Pollsters work very hard to try to remove any sort of systemic bias, both from their methodology and their results. For politics, they will often assign a party weighting system–that is, if more Americans identify as liberal than conservative, they will weight the results so it gives a reflection of that.
I don’t know the actual details behind this–that is what the pollsters are for. But let’s look at what I do know.
But let’s look more into how to read the polls. It is generally not the best idea to simply pick a pollster and rely exclusively on that one. So the first step in reading the polls is to read a number of them. Gallup is good, Rasmussen is good, they are both showing different numbers. Instead of assuming one of them is wrong and the other is right, perhaps you should consider taking them both into consideration? The more data, the better. If there is a legitimate trend, it will be reflected in multiple polls. CNN even conducts a “poll of polls” to get a better idea of the overall mood. And of course, fivethirtyeight.com, pollster.com, and realclearpolitics.com also perform poll aggregations (and include state polls).
But it’s also really tempting to assume, based on a poll’s numbers, that it is because of something your beloved candidate did or didn’t do. Guessing the motivations of the American public is tricky at best, so I recommend against this, but if you really want to see why there’s a change, look at some of the other numbers, and compare them to what they were earlier. Many pollsters report on a number of factors. They might ask if you feel confident or content that the economy will get back on the right track if this candidate wins. They might ask if you feel he is knowledgeable, or ready to lead, or understands your needs. They might ask if you feel confident that if he is elected the nation will have a good, capable leader.
These numbers are not reflected in the topline “Obama is up by eight points” data–but it can give you a good indication of a number of things. Are the people afraid of Obama? Is he likely to lose supporters? Is McCain’s negative campaigning having the desired effect? Is the race tightening because of that? Is the candidate improving his positive view among the American public, or are they increasingly worried about him?
These numbers make up the difference between a hesitant “I support John McCain” and an enthusiastic “I support John McCain.” You have been seeing the race tighten in the past few days, but the public doesn’t seem more optimistic about John McCain as president. I suspect what you’re seeing is a number of undecideds seeing that McCain is about to lose and deciding they are going to support him. They just aren’t happy about it.