Steve Gill, Stupid As Ever

Steve Gill attempts to use the empty space between his ears to provide analysis on the recent ABC/WaPo poll which showed Obama up 9 points.

Now, I happen to agree that I think 9 points is a bit of an outlier, more like 4 or 5 points, but still, he doesn't even bother to check the basic facts:

Also, the poll questioned a lot more women than men. In fact, the gender gap was eight points. Women are expected to vote in slightly larger numbers than men this year, but not by a 54 to 46 margin! Because Democrats have consistently enjoyed a bit of a gender advantage with women voters, this margin gives Obama’s poll numbers a significant boost.

Shame on Steve Gill, I thought Republicans were supposed to have found their inner feminists this year. In fact, according to 2004 exit polls, the split was 54-46 in favor of the no Y chromosomes.

He also complains, "The poll also admits to “over sampling” the percentage of black voters. With Obama pulling about 95 percent of the black vote, do you think that might help his numbers a bit?" Yeah, if they didn't weight for the over-sampling, which they did considering they made note of their over sampling.

Pollsters do this to get a read on a certain subsection or demographic group. Because African Americans, or Jews, or Hispanics are a much smaller percentage of the population than Whites, if you want to get an accurate read on what this group of people think about the economy, Palin, or whatever, you have to get a larger sample size in order to have a reasonable MOE. Perhaps if Steve's race-baiting bell didn't go off in his head before he had a chance to read further down, he would've seen the caveat:

The added interviews (commonly referred to as an "oversample") were completed to ensure there were enough African American respondents for separate analysis; the group was not over-represented in the reported results from the full sample.

Steve Gill ought to stick to what he does best...oh wait, talking about stuff he has no clue about is what he does best; carry on.