ELON's poll (registered, population, party)

[Rich6896]

http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/elonp...xecSummary.pdf

The poll is skewed 11% in favor of the democrats..


201 respondents identified themselves as Democrat, while 181 identified as Republican. Also 81 people out of 683 don't know what they are. I do though.

[Carlos_Danger]

That seems to be a very small sample size.

[Rich6896]

I also don't like how they ignore Dr. Greg Brannon's senate campaign. He's done pretty well in other polls I've seen.

[Bull City Rising]

Originally Posted by Carlos_Danger

That seems to be a very small sample size.

Is that a mathematically-derived discomfort or are you just "swaggin'"?

I love when people swag! (No, Charlestonites, I didn't say shag... I said SWAG.) Because it means they can't do the math.

At a 95% confidence level, against a population size of 6,467,229, a poll with a 5% +/- margin of error would require a sample size of -- wait for it -- 384 individuals.

6.47m = number of registered voters in NC, or the population being measured.
MOE/confidence level: with a 384 individual sample, there is a 95% probability that the true positions of the entire 6.47m voting population lies within 5% points either way of the numbers in that survey.

[lb27608]

Originally Posted by Rich6896

http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/elonp...xecSummary.pdf

The poll is skewed 11% in favor of the democrats..


201 respondents identified themselves as Democrat, while 181 identified as Republican. Also 81 people out of 683 don't know what they are. I do though.

Skewed in favor of Democrats? Hardly. No idea where the 11% came from, either.

Democrats represent 42.7% of registered voters in NC, while Republicans only represent 30.8% (North Carolina State Board of Elections). That's a 11.9% advantage for registered Democrats. As we all know, though, party registration doesn't necessarily give an accurate picture of how people actually vote.

In this poll, 26.5% of the subjects identified as Republican or strong Republican, while 29.4% identified as Democrat or strong Democrat. If you throw in the independents who lean one way or the other, those percentages become 40.3% and 39.5%, respectively. That's pretty balanced.