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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (36258)	9/12/2000 3:46:45 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

That is how you read polls. There is a difference between reading the numbers for mathematical certainty and reading the numbers for probability. When none of the polls have Bush ahead and several of the polls have Gore ahead by 6, 7 and 8 points, there certainly is a better than even chance that Gore is ahead and Bush is behind.

To: Neocon who wrote (36258)	9/15/2000 6:29:13 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 769667

Sorry, old boy. The "margin of error" is a meaningless statistical term which depends purely on the number of respondents to the sample. The person with the higher percentage of support is always preferred by the sample. The wider the difference, the more likely the leader has the greater support. To say that there is no statistical difference between one with 47% and another with 41% is foolishness. The correct question to ask is what is the probability that the person with the higher score is supported by 50% or more of the relevant population. If the sampling method is unbiased and jake the leader always has greater than 50 per cent probability of being preferred by the relevant population. The bigger the sample, the greater the probability of the leader winning. On election day the sample becomes the actual voters (always much smaller than the voter list. If there is a 50% turnout, the "margin of error" in prior samples was always exaggerated. Thus "close races" are always predicted to be closer than they are. To a trained statisticians, these recent polls and trends show Gore has a much stronger lead than "statictical tie." As always, things can change, but there is a powerful tendency for people not to change their minds. As more and more people become publicly committed to pollsters and their friends, they lock themselves in. At this point, I would judge that Gore has a 2 to 1 probability of winning.