Microplummeting
Headline: “Newshub poll: Key’s popularity plummets to lowest level”
Just 36.7 percent of those polled listed the current Prime Minister as their preferred option — down 1.6 percent — from a Newshub poll in November.
National though is steady on 47 percent on the poll — a drop of just 0.3 percent — and similar to the Election night result.
So, apparently, 0.3% is “steady” and 1.6% is a “plummet”.
The reason we quote ‘maximum margin of error’, even though it’s a crude summary, not a good way to describe evidence, underestimates variability, and is a terribly misleading phrase, is that it at least gives some indication of what is worth headlining. The maximum margin of error for this poll is 3%, but the margin of error for a change is 1.4 times higher, about 4.3%.
That’s the maximum margin of error, for a 50% true value, but it doesn’t make that much difference– I did a quick simulation to check. If nothing happened, the Prime Minister’s measured popularity would plummet or soar by more than 1.6% between two polls about half the time purely from sampling variation.
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