#1002 Poli-Math

Every now and then, I like to have fun and tear apart some statistics. You know they say that 95% of people that believe in statistics are wrong 50% of the time.
No truer words were spoken when the political pundits start throwing around their math. Like this recent news story. It was on terrorism, torture and politics and it said 88% of people who identify themselves as Republicans agree with Cheney on torture. Wow, 88%, sounds like Cheney has some pretty strong support.
Then the article goes on to say the 98% of people who identify themselves as Democrats disagree with Cheney’s methods. Pretty much what you’d expect. Cheney was ever the lightning rod divider. Word has it even his sunglasses were polarizing.
On the face of it 98% and 88% seem pretty close. But if you dig a little deeper into the statistics a wider gap emerges. Turns out only 24% of voters now identify themselves as Republican.
The total number of voters in the last elections was approximately 130 million. 24% of 130 million is still a sizable number. It’s 31.2 million. So 88% of 31.2 million is about 27.5 million.
The other 76% of total voters amounts to about 100 million. 98% of 100 million is, let’s see, let me get out the calculator here, 100 times point 98 equals, here it is, 98 million.
So instead of being a comparatively equal 88% to 98% it’s 31 million to 98 million. An apparent 10 point percentage difference is actually a 67 point person difference.
So then I heard another article about the Governor of Texas making secession noises. In the last election, McCain won the state of Texas. But even there the vote count was surprisingly close. 4.4 million to 3.5 million. Hardly the monolithic bloc you’d think from all the secessionist ballyhoo.
But here’s an interesting statistical anomaly. Remember that 88% of Republicans number that agreed with Cheney? 27.5 million. That’s a figure surprisingly close to the entire population of Texas, which is 24.6 million.
So what do you think of how this sounds? The Republic of Republicans of Texas...?
Hmmmm.
America, ya gotta love it.