If having your tour of duty in Iraq was not bad enough news, the skewed MSM poll that oversampled Sunni Arabs by about 100% noted here Monday morning helped drag down the morale of the 9th Cavalry Regiment as it patrolled the dangerous streets of Baghdad in Humvees after dark:
Platoon commander of the 9th Cavalry Regiment, Captain Christopher Dawson, said he understood the need for troops to stay in Iraq.
“We are starting to make a difference,” he said. “The violence is dropping. We are training Iraqis to take over responsibility for their own security. We are helping them see their future ahead of them. It is in their hands.”
But the lower ranks were in rebellious mood, especially after publication of a poll on Monday, commissioned by the BBC, ABC News, ARD German TV and USA Today, which showed only 18 percent of those questioned had confidence in US and coalition troops, while 78 percent opposed their presence.
“If no one wants us here we are quite ready to get out tomorrow,” said the outspoken vehicle commander.
One of the few Iraqis the troops met during their night patrol—most stay indoors once the 8pm curfew kicks in—said he feared the day the US forces pulled out.
“They can stay for 100 years if they want,” said Salam Ahmed, a security guard at a shoe warehouse on the outskirts of the city. “If they go, the bad guys will certainly come for me.”
Meanwhile, in some godforsaken cave near Waziristan, Osama bin Laden is penning a thank-you note to the BBC, ABC News, ARD German TV and USA Today. After all, you just can’t buy that kind of propaganda… so it’s lucky for him that useful idiots provide it for him.
Not to be a stickler or anything, Karl, but oversampling is common in polling.
The numbers from the oversample is weighted appropriately before being blending back into the figures for the overall result.
It is done to ensure greater accuracy, not an attempt to distort the results.
Setting aside alfi’s expertise in the manipulation of statistical data, can I just say that in my experience, soldiers don’t really care a damn what civilians think about what soldiers are doing, whether it is a popular war, an unpopular one or the usual boring, uncomfortable kind.
Soldiers regard civilians rather as I regard alfi. With a kind of tolerant contempt.
Thanks for your tolerance, furris.
I was just saying it’s not the polling company’s fault if the press is reporting bad numbers. They reported their oversample in their complete report.
I am known for my tolerance, alfster.
By the way, I should have said “Good morning”. Please excuse the oversight.
Alphie brings up a good point – oversampling per se can provide higher resolution of critical polling populations, but doesn’t have to distort final results provided that the raw results themselves aren’t passed off comprehensive. In this particular case, did eithert the pollsters or reporters take raw data and pass it off as final, or did their analysis allow for the oversampling of some populations?
Hey, do you think that bin Laden is also sending a thank you note to President Bush for letting him go and for making Iraq such a great Al Qeada recruitment tool? Seems that Bush has done far more for his jihad than the media.
Hey, do you think salvage sends his lobotomist a Christmas card every year?
All indications are that Bin Laden loves George W. He’s always talking about how he wishes George would always be president. Osama should debate George on FOX News. Oh wait, Bin Laden is too busy shitting himself in a cave to come out and debate. My bad.
salvage
I appreciate the honesty of your confession, salvage – but enough about you and your BDS.
I just saw the front page of this morning’s WaPo with the headline “Iraq War Enters 5th Year”. And the (huge, full-color) picture they used to illustrate it? A close-up of a GI’s gloved hand holding a menacing looking Beretta while frightened Iraqi children look on in the background.
Yup. That about sums up their take on it.
Those Assholes.
FBA dhimmis, also trying to sell newspapers to dupees.
salvage,
Yeah, I can’t help but notice how effective and frequent al-Qaeda attacks have been over the last year. They must have killed a million infidel warriors worldwide in FY ‘06!
tw: Osama loves me this I know, because a moonbat told52 me so…
*Seems that Bush has done far more for his jihad than the media. *
It only seems that way if you’re a fucking moron.
I wonder if it physically hurts people like the little guy salvage when AQ members die? Because ever since Bush re-opened up that front, they weren’t just dying fast enough. Now, they are. Well maybe not fast enough, but MUCH faster than before. And I say that as someone who wasn’t a proponent of re-opening that front. But it is nice to know that they are dying and that idiots like the above troll are conflicted by that.
tw: free
It’s good to know that we live in a country where idiots such as salvage and the resident lunatic, *lph**, are free to show us their stupidity in all it’s brilliant colors.
Matt, Esq.
Seeming is believing, eh what, ‘salvage’?
Well, let’s see.
Since 1/1/06 there have been 3140 terrorists killed in Irag and Afghanistan.
I think about this point that poor old Osama is going crazy, muttering to himself “Quagmire. Quagmire. Quagmire.”
The Arabic for which is
“mustanqa’, mustanqa’, mustanqa’”
obviously you need to read it backwards for the full effect
I would like to take this opportunity to announce the results of a new poll I just conducted on myself. Middle-aged, conservative, white male computer programmers were oversampled ∞%.
Respondents to this poll overwhelmingly agreed that polls are meaningless, yet pernicious propaganda tools designed to shape the preferences of those too lazy or ignorant to weigh the facts and form their own opinions. But what is truly surprising about this poll is that 100% of respondents would rather kiss an armadillo just off a Spring Break binge of peyote, Patron Reposado, and Cheez Whiz habañero poppers than let our valiant troops be demoralized by this type of information warfare.
Don’t hold your breath while waiting for that return call from Dancing With the Stars.
alphie,
From the survey notes:
“The sample was weighted by sex, age, education, urban/rural status and population of province.”
The sample isn’t weighted for ethnicity. Thats easy to do, but somehow they decided against it. So your assertion that “It is done to ensure greater accuracy, not an attempt to distort the results” seems to be inaccurate. The survey company is not giving an accurate depiction of the universe they are seeking to explain.
CORRECTION
The weapon pictured in the front page photo of the Washington Post was not a Beretta. It was an M4 with a grenade launcher attachment that was apparently being used to terrorize the waif.
Slackjawedyokel sincerely regrets the error and promises to have his first cup of coffee before attempting to identify objects at a distance with a single disgusted glance.
The error not withstanding, the WaPo remains a gleeful doomsaying mouthpiece for surrender monkeys.
I’m holding out for a spot on MXC. “Computer geeks vs. moonbat freaks”
Anyone know where I can find a March 1945 poll that oversampled German Nazis and asked their opinion of whether things were better in Germany at that time than in 1942? And how about articles from the press mindlessly “reporting [those] bad numbers?”
I suspect that there is no such poll and there are no such articles. And I know that there was no March 1945 equivalent of alphie – people just knew better then.
Not only was the poll apparently not reweighted to account for oversampling Sunni Arabs, alphie commented at my prior post, which notes that the poll was oversampled in certain geographic areas, but not by ethnicity. Not that alphie understands what he’s reading.
When alphie comes forward with proof of his credentials for analyzing public opinion polls, I will dislose mine. I suspect the comparison will not favor him.
*But what is truly surprising about this poll is that 100% of respondents would rather kiss an armadillo just off a Spring Break binge of peyote, Patron Reposado, and Cheez Whiz habañero poppers than let our valiant troops be demoralized by this type of information warfare.*
While I recognize that its a poll of one, in the event you also included middle aged lawyers with mediocre careers in the survery, I would have to say “I agree”.
Dude, I would SO watch that.
Am I the only one to notice that the company that produced this poll – D3 Systems – is the same one involved in the bogus Lancet Iraqi death toll study? And how do they explain a SMALLER margin of error than you commonly see in American and European polling?
You just have to pick the right clusters. You carefully edit the data to remove any
points that don’t support your conclusionoutliers.They you lie. Because 97.29% of all Americans’ eyes glaze over when they see math. Any number with at least two decimal places just HAS to be correct.
I don’t see the big deal. They oversampled in some regions, and then they weighed by regional population. Perhaps they used old population statistics, because of displacement…
They did oversample in some regions, disclosed it, and (perhaps) accounted for it. They apparently did not account for it when addressing religion/ethnicity, even though they are attempting to measure opinion in a country supposedly riven with sectarianism, and even though they broke out the data by religion/ethnicity in a number of the questions asked. That is, the poll itself accepts that the differences among these groups is important, yet made no effort to reweight the sample on that basis.
As for the effect of displacement, news accounts unsurprisingly suggest it is largely Sunni Arabs leaving—which makes the over-reresentation of Sunni Arabs in the sample worse, not better.
I have to withdraw the D3 Systems link above. I was told this but can’t verify it myself. One of the few times I don’t check out a source for myself first it turns out to be wrong!