Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Statistics and the lies they present us with


(there's that darn cat but he's being stubborn and won't animate)

My old man was a statistician. Yep a number cruncher or bean counter. Take your pick. I'm terrible at math but I did learn a few things from my dad along the way like lying with statistics. I hate percentages. I hate ads in the newspaper that offer sales that say 50% off when they don't tell you the original price because usually it's a lie. So too it is with polling figures. The winner got 46%. 46% of what I'd ask? Okay here's the stats but they mean very little unless you know the whole story. That I will give later. (God I hate teases too)



Statewide Votes
Michele BachmannREP3,959
0.24%
Herman CainREP3,494
0.21%
Newt GingrichREP533,038
31.93%
Jon HuntsmanREP6,197
0.37%
Gary JohnsonREP1,196
0.07%
Ron PaulREP117,094
7.01%
Rick PerryREP6,768
0.41%
Mitt RomneyREP774,942
46.42%
Rick SantorumREP222,774
13.34%
1,669,462total votes cast

Now I peel away the curtain of what lame stream media isn't or won't tell you and we find some interesting facts. Below is the listing of how many registered voters there are in the state of Florida with party break down.

Republican: 4,075,147 Democrat: 4,562,964 Other: 2,638,324 Total: 11,276,435

Floridas' primary is a closed primary meaning only people registered with a particular party may vote for their candidates. No cross party voting. So of all the registered republicans in the state only 40% came out to vote for any republican candidate. South Carolina only saw a turn out of 21%. To reframe this then 60% of Florida republican voters see no sense in voting while nearly 80% of republican voters in South Carolina see no use in voting. That does seem odd seeing as how the pundits keep telling us that if things are bad economically in an election year then the party in power will get thrown out. And we all know how the doom and gloom sayers have been touting Obama's policies as failed. You think maybe just maybe the American people are starting to wake up to the fact that we can't go back to the policies that got us into this mess in the first place? Tax cuts and deregulation does not create jobs. And seeing as how we have an aging population you think anyone would want to give up their social security and medical just so that some greedy people on Wall Street have more money to play with? I didn't think so either.

The clown car rolls on next stop Nevada.

9 comments:

Randal Graves said...

People can use statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.

BBC said...

The cat image was posted as a .png file, it has to be posted as a .gif file to show animated in a browser window.

If it was a gif file on your computer Blogger changed the extension when you posted it, is my guess.

Anyway, learned last evening that you can drag/drop your pictures onto the post instead of uploading them, might try that.

Demeur said...

Well 28% of the people think you're wrong so there :P

I tried it every way from Sunday and this is the only way I could get anything to work. Maybe the .gif file is too big for blogger. What's supposed to happen is an image of an atomic bomb going off is supposed to be seen in his glasses.

BBC said...

.gif files are pretty small, that is why they are popular (I used to make some) so that isn't the problem.

If you have a working copy email it to me and I'll try posting it, or fixing it.

I wonder if Gingrich is going to tell the press to find their own damn clown bus to Nevada.

Jim Marquis said...

Interesting post. I saw one of Romney's minions trying to say that since he won big in the Florida primary then he would win big there in November general election. It's good to know how many Republican voters didn't make the effort to vote yesterday.

Tom Harper said...

49.3% of the public thinks opinion polls are inaccurate 16% of the time.

BBC said...

There will be a gif file in my post in the morning and I think it's going to work, we'll find out tomorrow.

BBC said...

99.999 percent of the monkeys on this rock are idiots. :-)

Toxic Drums said...

Seven fifths of teachers don't understand fractions. And, of course, there are two types of people on this planet; those who understand binary and those who don't.