Daily Kos

Newsweek's "New Poll Low": Another revelation

Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 12:30:58 PM PDT

At the top of this open thread, mcjoan points to a recent Newsweek poll showing Bush at a 26% overall approval rating.

Newsweek gives the by-party breakdown as follows:

Current Total26%65%9%
Republicans60%25%15%
Democrats8%87%5%
Independents20%71%9%

A little linear algebra (below the flip) reveals an interesting consequence of these figures:    Only 27% of the respondents identified as Republicans, while 41% identified as Democrats (or, alternatively, Newsweek weighted the data in this manner, although Mystery Pollster states that Newsweek does not weight by party.)  

I knew Democrats had an advantage in party ID, but fourteen points?  

Summary of calculations:  

I assumed that the percentages of respondents added up to 100% for each question, since Newsweek included a non-committal "Don't know/don't care" answer.  

Letting r, d, and i, represent the percentage of respondents who identified as Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, respectively, we get:

0.60r + 0.08d + 0.20i = 0.26
0.25r + 0.87d + 0.71i = 0.65
0.15r + 0.05d + 0.09i = 0.09

Solving this 3x3 system of equations leads us to:  
r = 27.27%
d = 40.91%
i = 31.82%

Tags: Newsweek, Democrats, Republicans, polls (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

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