Flounder
09-19-2008, 03:50 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/page/election-2008-political-pulse-teacher
A succinct summary is found in the second paragraph.
People picked the Democrat over Republican John McCain to catch a game with by 50 percent to 47 percent, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released Friday. Asked which they'd choose to be their child's teacher, Obama was the choice by a more decisive 55 percent to 44 percent, including a markedly stronger performance by the Illinois senator among whites.
So the question, as indicated by my title, is do we really need polls about stupid shit like this?
Should I care that Obama scored a victory in these two questions? I really don't. It makes me wonder why pollsters choose to ask such questions. Is it just something to BS about?
The only thing I can think of that would be interesting about such questions would be as a way to monitor things like how effective McCain's "celebrity" attack has been, but that would require some data collected over a period of time.
What I really wish they would have asked, as a follow up, was (1) who they were planning to vote for (which from the article it looks like they may have done) and (2) are they basing their vote, in whole or in part, on either of those qualities. THAT would have been kinda interesting. It's bandied about a lot that some significant chunk of voters base their votes on stuff like that, but I have no inkling to what degree that's true. There were probably polls about that in 2000/2004 but I don't remember.
On a lighthearted note, and throwing on my epi/stats hat, here's a breakdown of the data I'd like to see, just for fun:
What do the poll results look like if you break down the teacher question by if the respondent has children that are elementary age, or junior high/high school age.
My guess would be McCain might have an advantage with parent's of older students since he's been in a war and they could envision him as a history teacher or some such.
Similarly I think Obama would have a fairly large advantage among parents of elementary school age children. Obama's got a friendly face and funny looking big ears, and let's face it, John McCain is old and, as a result of his POW experience, moves his arms quite awkwardly. He'd the scare the living shit out of little kids. :p
A succinct summary is found in the second paragraph.
People picked the Democrat over Republican John McCain to catch a game with by 50 percent to 47 percent, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released Friday. Asked which they'd choose to be their child's teacher, Obama was the choice by a more decisive 55 percent to 44 percent, including a markedly stronger performance by the Illinois senator among whites.
So the question, as indicated by my title, is do we really need polls about stupid shit like this?
Should I care that Obama scored a victory in these two questions? I really don't. It makes me wonder why pollsters choose to ask such questions. Is it just something to BS about?
The only thing I can think of that would be interesting about such questions would be as a way to monitor things like how effective McCain's "celebrity" attack has been, but that would require some data collected over a period of time.
What I really wish they would have asked, as a follow up, was (1) who they were planning to vote for (which from the article it looks like they may have done) and (2) are they basing their vote, in whole or in part, on either of those qualities. THAT would have been kinda interesting. It's bandied about a lot that some significant chunk of voters base their votes on stuff like that, but I have no inkling to what degree that's true. There were probably polls about that in 2000/2004 but I don't remember.
On a lighthearted note, and throwing on my epi/stats hat, here's a breakdown of the data I'd like to see, just for fun:
What do the poll results look like if you break down the teacher question by if the respondent has children that are elementary age, or junior high/high school age.
My guess would be McCain might have an advantage with parent's of older students since he's been in a war and they could envision him as a history teacher or some such.
Similarly I think Obama would have a fairly large advantage among parents of elementary school age children. Obama's got a friendly face and funny looking big ears, and let's face it, John McCain is old and, as a result of his POW experience, moves his arms quite awkwardly. He'd the scare the living shit out of little kids. :p