Another Bogus Poll by the LA Times

According to a poll, abuzz in the media this week, Kerry pulled ahead of Bush by 7 points ! Hmmm...let's look at the numbers. Bush leads in Independants by 3 points and leads in Republicans, by a greater margin than Kerry leads in Democrats. The country is approx 40% Rep/Dem and 20% Independant. If that was the case in the poll, Bush would be ahead as shown below. Sorry for the allignment problems...you can't paste charts into these boxes.

If poll used make up of the country Bush would lead 50% to 46%:
Dem Ind Rep
40.00% 20.00% 40.00% Totals
Total 468 234 468 1,169 100.00%
Bush 37 115 430 582 49.80%
Kerry 416 108 14 538 46.00%

Actual poll results:
All Dem Ind Rep
Bush 44.0% 8.0% 49.0% 92.0%
Kerry 51.0% 89.0% 46.0% 3.0%


To get the numbers they came up with:
Dem Ind Rep
48.75% 15.50% 35.75% Totals
Total 570 181 418 1,169 100.00%
Bush 46 89 384 519 44.39%
Kerry 507 83 13 603 51.59%

To get their percentages for Bush and Kerry, using the pattern of how each group voted, they would have to have almost 49% Dems, 15.5% Ind and only 36% Reps. So, they grossly over represented the Dems in the poll. Its no wonder that their poll showed Kerry out front !!!