[quote name='mykevermin']Which is precisely why you're so pitifully assailing the methodology, yes?
Oh, you meant the above quote in a different way. Right. Well. Hmm.
Also, you're going to joke about Farleigh Dickinson as a less-than-prestigious college (and that, therefore, should be a market of the authority behind research? Someone should tell the students who turned over Reinhart-Rogoff; those two are from Columbia, so by your standard, they must be right!)...but you're going to slyly treat the survey's validity as questionable because of the college it came from...and your citation to compete with that is "about.com."
Just checking to make sure that's the direction you'd like to go here. You can have a mulligan if you like. I think you should take it.[/QUOTE]
I don't have their data.
But based on their sample size and the default level of confidence they used (95% is the most common) their margin of error is also correct.
But that doesn't tell me anything.
What does tell me something is nowhere in that wonderful article you linked does it mention WHAT QUESTIONS WERE ASKED TO THE POLL AUDIENCE.
Edit: Just because the study says:
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Democrats say that Congress
needs to pass new laws to protect the public from gun violence, but the views of Republicans
are almost completely opposite: 65 percent don’t think new laws are necessary. Overall,
registered voters are divided over the need for new gun control legislation. Fifty percent
agree it is needed, with 39 percent who disagree.
Doesn't mean the target audience was asked:
"Does Congress need to pass new laws to protect the public from gun violence" or "Does their need to be new gun control legislation".
That is not how "most" of these studies work.