Opinion poll reporting
From the Herald: Most Norfolk Islanders want to cut ties with Australia and join New Zealand – survey
The second sentence of the piece: “The rebels outnumber those who want free association with Australia, with 37% of the vote compared to 35%.”
We don’t usually consider 37% as ‘most’.
With a little searching, you can find the primary source: the website of Norfolk Island People for Democracy Most people who responded don’t like the current system, and they are roughly evenly split between full independence, a looser association with Australia giving local control of domestic affairs, or a similarly loose association with New Zealand.
Also, it looks like an online clicky poll. We’d usually just dismiss these, but there were 450 responses and the Island has a population of only 1800. If they took reasonable care to make sure the votes were one to a person and from the local population, the numbers are worth paying attention to. Even if you made the extreme assumption that everyone who didn’t take part supported the status quo, 415 wanting to change it is a substantial fraction.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »