Wednesday, January 16, 2008

More on political polling

Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman U.S. president, held a 21-point edge over Obama in October. He cut that to 8 points by last month, and the new survey gave her a 39 percent to 38 percent edge.

Her 1-point lead was well within the poll's margin of error of 4.7 percentage points.


The above demonstrates the blog entry below, about political polls. First the reporters tell us that Hillary has a 1 % point lead over Obama, but then they explain there is a error (interval) of 4.7%. So support for Hillary is somewhere between 34.3% to 43.7% - the midpoint is what the reporters reported, 39%. Clearly, Hillary and obama's intervals overlap, so the race is a dead heat. Hillary does not have an "edge" over Obama, the race is so close we don't know who has more support.

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