09.25.08

How to Read Polls

Posted in math, politics at 3:45 pm by danvk

On September 15, SurveyUSA released this poll of likely voters in Virginia:

McCain (R) 46%
Obama (D)  50%
Margin of Error: +/-3.7%

Tables like this appear on TV and in newspapers all the time. But they’re never accompanied by any explanation of how to interpret the margin of error. Commentators usually interpret it in one of two ways:

  1. Obama is ahead by more than the margin of error, hence his lead is statistically significant.
  2. That “+/-” means either number could be off by that amount. If you added 3.7% to McCain’s 46% and subtracted 3.7% from Obama’s 50%, McCain would actually be ahead. So Obama’s lead is not statistically significant; it is less than twice the margin of error.

In either case, they are wrong.

So what’s the right way to interpret the margin of error? A lead is significant if it is 1.6 times the margin of error or greater. That’s 5.9% for our poll, so Obama’s lead is not significant.

This is a strange, non-intuitive rule, which explains why commentators don’t use it. The derivation is more revealing than the rule itself.
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