WTF?

[tko_ak]

I went onto CNN's website just now, and their poll question was:

Should Americans be able to sponsor foreign-born same-sex partners for citizenship?I thought it was an interesting question, but when I voted, I was surprised by the results so far

Comments

Resident Statistician

[trusting_fool]

For anyone who's terribly curious, the numbers looked a little close, so I ran a test of proportions. With the large sample size, it's a pretty significant difference (p=.0012).

Re: Resident Statistician

[tko_ak]

What does that mean in English? It's been awhils since my research methods courses.

Re: Resident Statistician

[trusting_fool]

The chance that there's actually an even split is .12%.

Re: Resident Statistician

[tko_ak]

Ok, so it's the margin of error. Or, the confidence level. They taught us that nothing was credible unless it was >5%.

[redstar826]

It's important to remember that sometimes bloggers will find these sorts of polls and encourage their readers to go vote, so polls like this don't necessarily mean that the typical audience of the site feels a certain way.

[anarchys_savior]

I usually love CNN polls because, as you pointed out, it has mostly liberal viewers and the results make me happy for a few seconds until I remember that it's not representative of the country at large. lol