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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (45261)	8/26/2010 2:28:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

A point or two month-to-month in the polls is NOTHING! Not for one month, but for several months in a row, its an important drop. 'Noticable', sure. 'Statistically significant'? No way in Hell. The margin of error from these polls is rarely equal to the seven or eight or so point difference here. I suppose if you assume that the error in both polls is at the extreme end of the margin in the opposite direction then it could cover the total difference (you could have a 3 and a half point margin of error for each), but its unlikely that this error would work out exactly that way (with Reagan's polls showing him more popular that reality by the defined margin or error, while Obama shows him less popular by the margin of error). Also if you assume that large of error margin than the whole point your trying to raise (about Obama's historical popularity chart looking like Reagan's) is meaningless. The whole issue probably isn't worth this many words, its really not an important one, but going by the data we have, Reagan's popularity at this point in his presidency was a lot higher than Obama's is now.