 |
 |
|
Showing a characteristic cluelessness as to how polls and politics works, the Xbox Live press center trumpeted the following numbers based on "nearly 100,000 LIVE Americans [who] turned out to cast their “votes” in a poll over Xbox LIVE, making it larger than the combined samples from individual Gallup, NBC, and CNN polls":
Obama \ Biden: 43%
McCain \ Palin: 31%
Undecided: 13%
Other: 13%
Hey Xbox people, samples are samples for a reason, and not just for the number of people polled. Samples are created to avoid meaningless demographics like self-selecting gamers who happen to log onto Xbox Live and feel inclined to click a button next to the name of one of the candidates. Also, how many of your nearly hundred thousand are registered, likely, or even eligible voters? At least they showed a little statistical discrimination by limiting the voting to Americans.
The buried lead in the press release is that 55,000 people downloaded voter registration forms through Xbox Live. That's a far more compelling data point than how many random yahoos felt like clicking on someone's name.
By the way, speaking of random yahoos, care to wager how many of those 13% who selected "other" were Ron Paul holdouts?
Frakjack
Welcome to Eureka
Carter's Car Dodge
By Lizard Dude at 8:16 PM ON 09/23/08
Obama must buy his ties the same place as Dilbert.
By Dagerroth at 12:01 AM ON 09/24/08
Tom Chick .... yea your last name fits you bitch like a chick any way let me guess your a right wing wacko who got his/her feeling hurt from this poll i will give you one thing at less 25% of that poll was teens who cant vote yet but will soon and with any luck will vote for the left every time
By Tom Chick at 1:56 AM ON 09/24/08
Mr. Roth, if you'll read some of the other things I've written here, you'll discover that your assumptions about my politics are pretty far off base. :) If I had my druthers, we'd just forward that Xbox Live survey to the Electoral College and call it a day. Unfortunately, the American political process is a bit more involved than that, so I'll be on tenterhooks for another month or so.
By NearChaos at 6:57 AM ON 09/25/08
And the "official" polls only include people with land line phones, like my grandmother, and my kids' semi-retired cranky bus driver. And that's new since the last elections, where those polls didn't do so well.
And frankly, even they play video games. Haven't you seen the pictures of seniors playing Wii bowling?
The 55K voter registration forms is more telling. If the gamers show up in droves, and every indication is that they will, it will be a very different election this year, and in two years CNN will be running polls on World of Warcraft.
By Diggs at 10:40 AM ON 09/25/08
XboX voters! This is just too comical. The very idea is ludicrous.If the majority were teens that voted,so what?! Just because they MIGHT vote a certain way in the future means that this silly vote counts? Oh puh-lease.What foolishness.The majority playing xbox ARE kids.Give me a break.This whole thing was just foolishness.Why not make voting on-line possible so then your dear old grandma or the senoirs playing wii bowling can go on-line and vote when they can't get around? stop w/ the rubbish already.Voting on Xbox,indeed.I laugh!!!
By Chewy Cadaver at 11:25 AM ON 09/25/08
All your assumptions are doing is making all of you look like asses. The only legitimate comment was from Lizard Dude. It's a poll, that's all. Out of the 12 million live subscribers, I'd say at least a 1/4 of those are probably American. That makes 4 million potential pollers and with 100,000 votes I'd have to say the ones that took the time to vote instead of just jumping into a game were probably the people that actually care about this botched election regardless of age. No poll is accurate and these votes don't actually count so why get your panties in a bunch.
By GeohoundXVI at 10:30 PM ON 09/25/08
This "poll" has so many statistical sampling errors as to be too numerous to count. The most basic of which are to say that the sample is not random, the response is entirely selective and I would be interested to know exactly what the non response was. These numbers are just that, numbers. They have very little statistical meaning at all.
By GeohoundXVI at 11:28 PM ON 09/25/08
Furthermore, (This just occurred to me) There is no statistical means of calling this data significant. All statistical tests of significance for Categorical variables (Obama's McCain's, Other's Support) require the assumption of a random sample. As this is not a random sample in the statistical sense these data cannot be said to be statistically significant.
By Jasper22 at 9:48 AM ON 09/26/08
Wow Dagerroth what a stunning display of liberal lunacy and stupidity. Someone challenges what you would like to believe is the truth and then you go completely ballistic, i think it might be time to reevaluate just who got their feelings hurt. To top it all off the poll is in your favor, so just what are you bitching about?