The dumbest thing the Brady Campaign has done to date...

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NavyLCDR

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I can't put into words how completely ridiculous this is. A total new low:

http://www.kirotv.com/news/23540945/detail.html

http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/bcam/legislation/open_carry/polling-overview-slides.ppt

http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1248/

Guess where Lake Research Partners is located?

Lake Research Partners
1726 M St., NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202.776.9066
Fax: 202.776.9074

Lake Research Partners
1936 University Ave, Suite 300
Berkeley, CA 94704
Tel: 510.286.2097
Fax: 510.704.1920

Lake Research Partners
220 Fifth Ave., Fifth Floor
New York, NY 10001
Tel: 646.217.4085
Fax: 202.776.9074

Please post comments on KIROTV website and write to the Lake Research Partners and tell them what you think of their poll of 600 Americans. That is .0002 of 1% of the American population!

Email LRP at [email protected]

Here's my email:
Dear Lake Research Group,

Brady Campaign poll results. Come on, seriously? Brady Campaign has posted publically that you did a poll of 600 voters nationwide. Really? What do you consider to be nationwide. You've got offices in Washington, DC, Berkely CA, and NYC, NY. Let me guess, that's probably what you consider to be nationwide. You realize by letting the Brady Campaign pay you off to produce skewed results from such a limited group of the American population you have lost any credibility that you might ever had. You really think that polling .0002% of the population that you can have any idea what the American public thinks about any topic at all? Heck, you poll 600 people in the correct locations and you could get 98% of Americans that say the moon is made of Swiss cheese!

Do yourselves a favor, don't sell out your company, your reputation, and your credibility to make a few thousand dollars doing something as completely ridiculous as this stunt. I would be very interested to hear your defense to this.

Very Respectfully,
John Havercroft
 
The Brady Campaign launched a petition on-line in February, in partnership with CREDO Action, asking Americans to urge Starbucks to bar guns from its stores. So far nearly 36,000 have signed.
Click to expand...


They started this on-line petition in February! I wonder how many signatures we could obtain in that length of time to applaud Starbucks for their decision to allow law abiding citizens into their coffee houses?

I personally had to stop drinking my favorite cup of joe, Pete's Coffee, and switched to Starbucks because of their decisions.
 
Luby's cafeteria

didn't seem like a place you'd need a gun either.
In response to the customer quoted in the article.
 
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, d...ed lies, and statistics."

Both sides tend to skew statistics. Do that same poll "nation wide" but outside of a gun store or range and the results would be the opposite.
 
Fifty-six percent of those polled want Starbucks to adopt a “no guns” policy on their premises while only 31 percent opposed such a policy. Of those who support a “no guns” policy, 42 percent were strongly in favor.
Click to expand...
It's only 56% of 600, and only 42% of that 56% actually care. So 336 Americans of the over THREE HUNDRED MILLION that live in this country don't like guns in Starbucks, and of those 336 only 141 might not get their coffee from Starbucks anymore...

LOOK OUT STARBUCKS! :rolleyes:

I'm so glad the Brady group wastes their time and money on stuff like this :)

EDIT: Is it just me or does this whole article sound kind of like this... http://www.puzzlersparadise.com/puzzles/allmanneroftrees.html
 
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If the sample size is 600 people their margin of error is ~4% (1/sqrt600).
A 4% margin of error is absurd since they could easily interpret the results of their poll as being for or against when saying "56% favor banning".

The other issue that should be addressed is whether the questions were objective or loaded to produce the "desired" result. One of the great challenges in any legitimate survey is to avoid asking loaded questions that bias the responses.

I'd like to see the poll questions themselves before putting much stock in the poll results.

Where Lake Research has offices isn't relevant to the validity of the poll, nor is the fact that the entire population of the country wasn't polled, the size of the sample and the questions asked are all that's important to forming an opinion of the validity of the results.
 
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Polls are worthless, you can skew the results anyway you want.

With enough fudging I could probably do a poll that shows the majority of Americans think the moon is made out of cheese.


They probably got those people from their member roles. Thats the simplest way to get the results you want, you poll people in a demographic thats more likely to be supportive of what you want the poll to show.


On the flip side if you want a poll in favor just poll NRA members, or get a mailing list of people who are members of shooting clubs, or have purchased guns. Or you could skew the results based on the area. Inside NY City its more than likely going to be against, so you would poll people in the rural midwest.
 
Brady Campaign has posted publically that you did a poll of 600 voters nationwide. Really? What do you consider to be nationwide. You've got offices in Washington, DC, Berkely CA, and NYC, NY. Let me guess, that's probably what you consider to be nationwide.
Click to expand...

I realize this may come as a surprise to you, but you can do a nationwide poll without having offices nationwide. This can be accomplished through such means as snail mail, the internet, and by telephone.

their poll of 600 Americans. That is .0002 of 1% of the American population!
Click to expand...

As hso noted, that is cutting things a bit close. However, that their sampling is only a small percentage of the poplulation isn't a shock and in fact is a fairly standard practice. With proper sampling, very small samples can be used to ascertain traits about an entire population.
 
Is this stupid personified? Yes.
I have learned though that when you argue with idiots, you don't win, and others can't tell the difference.
 
That's how statistics work. You take a small sample and project results for a population. That's why it is reported with a confidence interval of +-4%. I have no doubt about the truthfullness of their statistics. However, the questions asked would be interesting to see. Of course, they don't provide those.
 
Silly? Yes. Meaningless? Check. Deceptive? Affirmative.

I think that we all need to make a concerted effort to respond to these things when we see them reported on media websites. Without the benefit of being shown how deceptive these things are, average citizens often buy such nonsense.
 
I must say I think the Brady Campaign is loosing steam with all but the most leftist hater types. I think this because there seem to be a lot more leftists who are and have bought guns since the election took place. Even they had enough brains to see the possibility of not only the coming of total gun banning, but the total opening of our borders and the fact they (the current admin) might pull a amnisty deal and therefore endanger us all.

I personally know about 10 people who before the latest election would have NEVER though of buying a firearm, who all now have not only bought one, but some have bought a few since they found out not only was shooting fun, and that one can have and carry a gun and not be a wacko. But they have also learned that the WICKED gun lovers (us) are not really a bunch of wacked out wannabe killers, and that we are a bunch of nice, realistic, level headed people.
 
hso said:
If the sample size is 600 people their margin of error is ~4% (1/sqrt600).
A 4% margin of error is absurd ...
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. At least someone remembers their Introduction to statistics class!

This poll was a perfect example of why no one should ever accept anything anyone with a political agenda says at face value. What a bunch of crap, they ought to be ashamed.
 
This poll was a perfect example of why no one should ever accept anything anyone with a political agenda says at face value. What a bunch of crap, they ought to be ashamed.
Click to expand...

The warning is a good one and is reflexive.

Back around 2000-2002, I saw where the NRA and the Brady folks were both arguing using gun-related death information from the CDC. I thought it was strange that both used the same data and came up with different numbers and in each case, the numbers they presented favored their arguments.

So I checked out the CDC's data myself. What I learned was that both sides were taking liberties with how they presented the data and both had introduced considerable favorable bias as a result. From what I could tell of the data was that the data were actually more favorable to the NRA's stand, but not by much.

It bothers me when the bad guys lie to make the good guys look bad, but we sort of expect that from the bad guys. It bothers me more when the good guys like to make the good guys look even better. Then I start to wonder just how good the good guys really are.
 
Do I think the poll is bunk? Yes.

But, to be blunt, the OP's letter makes him sound like a bumpkin. If you don't understand the principles of polling (ie, the mathematical validity of population samples and how they can or can't be generalized to the whole), you shouldn't be indicting anyone's polling technique. As noted, the location of their offices is not related in any way to the people they poll (there are well-established systems for nationwide random telephone polling). And ending the letter with "very respectfully" when you just made a bunch of outlandish, poorly-informed statements about how they were "paid off to produce skewed results" is pretty silly.
 
This poll was a perfect example of why no one should ever accept anything anyone with a political agenda says at face value. What a bunch of crap, they ought to be ashamed.
Click to expand...

Typical polling though. Just last night the phone rang. Caller ID said it was a political call, so for fun I answered figuring I could get the chance to play. It was a polling company and they asked if i could take a few minutes and answer "several" questions for them.

Well after I answered the first question the guy hesitated and then just hung up. Apparently, my answer didn't fit the agenda this company had, so I'm sure that my answer is not being used in their statistics.
 
Question was" Do you feel that Harry Reid is doing a good job for the state of Nevada?"

I live in Vegas. They did not like my response...And I actually did not swear or curse at them. I just told the truth..
 
Well the best way for us to counter the Brady Bunch's "poll" is go buy a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks.


Money talks and BS walks!
 
A 4% margin of error is absurd ...
Click to expand...

Why is a 4 percentage-point margin of error absurd? Election-related polls almost always have a 3 percentage-point margin of error (and that comes from sampling just over 1000 randomly selected people).

Assuming that the sample was random, and I actually don't think that is too much of a stretch, then I don't see the margin of error being all that important here. If 56% of those polled were against guns, then we can be 95% confident that a majority in fact are.

No, those who question the polling questions are actually on the right track here. It is possible that the reported results could be from the 1 in 20 experiments that fall far from the truth (that's the definition of 95% confident). But it is much more likely that the questions are not balanced. It is very easy to influence the numbers by asking questions in a certain way.

In all likelihood, I doubt that the Starbucks policy has much affect on business. Even if we go so far as to grant the truth of the poll (that all things considered, many people would prefer "no guns"), I very much doubt that it actually deters many customers from going in and buying coffee.
 
wmeSha said:
In all likelihood, I doubt that the Starbucks policy has much affect on business. Even if we go so far as to grant the truth of the poll (that all things considered, many people would prefer "no guns"), I very much doubt that it actually deters many customers from going in and buying coffee.
Click to expand...

So true. What Starbucks policy has done is probably ran-off a couple of hardcore sheeple, but their standing up to the Brady Campaign has caused a lot of pro-gun folks to go to Starbucks simply to support them, even though they would not go there for the coffee!
 
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