I don’t think too many people will find this surprising… just sad. Also not surprising, “The PPP poll also revealed that Palin has more support among voters who believe interracial marriage should be illegal than among those who are OK with it.”
It’s an inaccurate and sensational headline/article. Only 400 people were polled, I expect there are more Republicans than that in MS. The headline would be just as ‘accurate’ if it said, “Less Than 200 People in Mississippi Want Interracial Marriage Banned”.
In order for your thesis to be correct they would have had to poll 100 percent of the population. Also, please explain how is it inaccurate.
You don’t have a clue how statistical sampling works, do you?
That’s interesting…
What is the percentage for Democrats? The firm in question says they will be releasing that information in the following weeks - we ought to look for that.
What’s the debate?
It’s too bad they released partial results. This looks like an indictment* of Mississippi Republicans, but it could more genuinely reflect the biases of the state or region. The context of the non-Republican sampling is needed.
*“Indictment” from a socially liberal perspective, I mean.
I find this difficult to believe. Anyone heard of the polling outfit, PPP before? Are they reputable?
To be clear, the released results are complete for that poll which was addressed only to likely Republican primary voters, a subset of registered Republicans which skews older. The non-Republicans aren’t being asked all the same questions, though the interracial-marriage one may be the same.
OK. It’d still be more meaningful in comparison to other political groups in the same population.
IIRC they’re somewhat partisan but also have produced fairly reliably predictive polls.
Looking over the data provided in the release there seem to be a couple of issues.
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As Mr. Moto stated no Democratic numbers. They are to be released. I am not really sure what the point of releasing the data in 2 stages unless you are trying to make some sort of political point.
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68% of the respondents are 46 and older (compared to 37% for the US as a whole) . Worse 32% are 65 and older (compared to only 17% for the US as a whole). This skew might also explain the high numbers.
I guess you could argue that the Mississippi Republican party is actually skewed demographically in the same way, but I would doubt that is actually the case.
Regardless, Can’t help but be a little depressed by the numbers. Especially since I am the product of an inter-racial marriage.
The poll was of “Republican primary voters”, so it’s not only skewed towards the GOP, but also to those who vote in primaries. I have no trouble in believing both would be older than the general voting-age population, including non-voters and Democrats.
So part of the result might be explained by age (older Democrats might have similar prejudices), and partly by political partisanship (voters in primaries are more likely to be members of the party’s “base”, and so more extreme in their opinions).
But it’s still depressing, especially when the accompanying photo of an “inter-racial” marriage has a bride and groom with practically the same shade of light brown in their skin.
Actually there are some cross tables in the PDF. Interesting stuff:
For the question: Do you think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal?
Interracial Marriage by Gender
Should be Illegal: Women=39%, Men=52%
Not a great showing for the Y chromosome impaired half of the species.
Interracial Marriage by Age
Should be Illegal: 18-29=54%, 30-45=38%, 45-65=39%, 65-Older=56%
The only thing that really jumps out at me is the 18-29 year old response rate. 54% think that it should be illegal. Hard to believe that people raised in this era would actually think this way at that rate.
In every category at least a 3rd of the people feel it should be illegal. Some of this has to be a strong regional bias. I doubt the same response would be found in say Hawaii, or anywhere outside of the south.
I live in Memphis, a mile or two from the Missisissippi border. I expect that you’re right about it being the bias of the region rather than the Republicans.
Yes, that’s depressing, but it’s limited to Republican primary voters, so it may not say anything about 18-29 year olds in the state as a whole.
I can’t open the poll here…does it say what the percentages are by race? The assumption seems to be that it’s the white people who are saying all of this (and who are Republicans), but in the South that attitude actually can go either way (though I don’t know how many blacks are Republican in that area). It seems that 400 is hardly representative, though…were there multiple polls to try and normalize the data?
It will be interesting to see what the data on this question coming from self identified Democrats might be, since in the South ‘Democrat’ can be a pretty conservative grouping…depending on who the 400 you select to poll are.
-XT
No, respondents were not asked their own race. The poll comprised 17 questions, of which 13 related to potential Republican candidates for president or governor. The remainder were gender, age group, political self-description (“very liberal” through “very conservative”), and “Do you think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal?”
I’m no statistician, but a sample size of 400 sounds pretty compelling for a total population (repeating Republican primary voters) that can’t be much more than 100,000. By comparison, the standard sample size for a Gallup nationwide poll is only 1,000 (and an error margin of 3% or so).
Its their education level not political views that are the problem. Expect similar statistics for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians and Democratic whites.