Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Misleading Fox News Poll

The Fox News Channel show "Hannity and Colmes" published the following poll during last night's show.

Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll
Reaction if Hillary is elected
Enthusiastic-16%

Pleased-24

Neutral-16

Displeased-14

Scared-26

Of Registered voters
Taken March 27-28 2007
Margin of error Plus or minus 3%

Now I am not a Hillary fan (in fact, if I had a chance to answer this poll, I would have been one of the 26% scared of her), but co-host Alan Colmes introduced the poll by saying that a majority of Americans are scared of her. Needless to say, this caused me to do a bit of quick math and we can combine four of the five choices. Enthusiastic and Pleased become just Pleased while Displeased and Scared become just Displeased. No matter how you slice it, both choices come out to 40% each and 80% total. The one choice that can't be linked is neutral which comes out to 16%. For the record, most people would take Alan Colmes at his word and accept this poll, but while I understand that polls don't necessarily balance out at 100%, this one totals 96% and isn't in the margin of error at all. Something is fishy here. For the record, a majority of North Dakotans haven't voted for a Democrat for President since 1964, but we would at least like to be informed. Do the same poll regarding Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, or John McCain.

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