Posted by FleshPresser at 11:17 PM /
Unknown posted at 5:17 AM
You got that right!!
But I'll keep trying.
The Professor posted at 9:30 AM
I had written a long comment--but decided to instead thank you for a topic for my blog. The bottom line though is this: it isn't hard to see that the votes are "worth less" when it is one of 122 million cast (only worth 1/122,000,000, right?) when if even 20 million cast their votes in American Idol, it's worth five times as much (in relative value), since my vote would be worth 1/20,000,000.
FleshPresser posted at 11:39 AM
I replied to you on your blog as well, but I thought I'd post the reponse here, as well....
Do you HONESTLY believe that people watching American Idol are noodling through things like aggregates, the total number of viewers per average episode of AI, and then comparing that to the total number of voters in the 2004 Presidential election, weighting their response accordingly, and in a measured fashion?
Or is the person in the middle of dinner, picking up the phone, and answering some questions in a knee-jerk fashion?
I think these statistics are far more telling and far more honest than you might believe them to be.
And if, by taking this on as a topic for yourself, you're trying to defend the notion that Americans have good voting habits in this country... well, that's just sad.
Or perhaps you're trying to voice opposition to the notion that the average American knows more about the contestants on American Idol than they do about their own COngressional candidates for the fall, or the potential Presidential candidates for 2008? That's a poll I'd like to see... "Question 1 - Name me your Congressional Representatives in both the House and Senate.
"Question 2 - Name me the remaining contestants on American Idol."
And if you think a majority of people would come up with more Congressional representatives than they would contestants... well, I'll gladly take the bet, as well as your money.
The Professor posted at 7:48 PM
As posted on my blog, in response to you (and others have commented there, as well):
Press:
As for my opinions about voters--I think your inference, from this data set, is simply invalid. You are inferring things from a survey about when the survey itself is suspect, and doesn't really tell us much of anything.
Let's assume, for this discussion, that the survey group for this question consisted only of those people that watch American Idol. Perhaps we can infer something about a group of people that spend their time watching others work hard to succeed. This tells us nothing about the rest of the population. And even then, it doesn't get to the reasons they believe why their vote does or does not count for more.
Simply put--simple analysis of simple statistics is simply wrong.
Perhaps this is where I inject my thought that people shouldn't encourage people to "go out to vote--it's your civic duty." That's just plain wrong. It's your civic duty to be an educated voter, and if you refuse to do/be that then it is your civic duty to refrain from voting! But the parties (any of em!) don't want THAT to happen.
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Unknown posted at 5:17 AM
