Explaining The Asterisk

By Kleinheider Posted on July 3, 2008 at 2:34 pm

Ed Cromer of the Tennessee Journal shines a bit of extra light on the recent polling on the U.S. Senate race released by the Bob Tuke campaign:

In his “Tuesdays with Tuke” e-mail this week, Nashville attorney Tuke offered only sketchy details of an “800 sample” Global Strategies Group poll but said it showed him 30 points ahead of Padgett with 57% undecided. Wednesday, the campaign said there had been a typographical error. The corrected survey results showed Tuke with 32%, Padgett 8%, others 4%, and 57% undecided — which because of rounding add up to 101%.

The correction included an asterisk note that the results were from a sub-sample of Democratic primary voters — meaning the margin of error is substantially higher than if the entire 800-person sample had been used. This suggests that the full sample was used to gauge Tuke’s standing versus Alexander. Those results weren’t given.

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