Survey: Support or Oppose? - RESULTS

[Don Plumley]

Originally Posted by Don Plumley

I read most the political threads. I'm struck by the range of emotion, vitriol and entrenchment. This got me thinking, at what level are people more opposed to their favored opponent versus supporting the positions of who they will vote for. In other words, is the guy you will vote for simply the lesser of two evils?

Assuming that the opposition to candidate X is greater than the support of candidate Y, is this correlated to the spectrum of political leanings?

So I have put up a very brief, anonymous survey: Support or Oppose: Click Here to take the survey

If we can get enough people to answer the couple of questions, I'll run the cross tabs and share the results. And since our political threads tend to be focused on a group of folks with clear political leanings, rather than having to voice your opinion in the public forum, we might be a broader view of how the OT crowd is distributed. Might be interesting.

Here are the results as of 8 AM PDT 9/1/08:


This is fairly direct: Over half (52%) of respondents oppose the other candidate 100% in comparison to one third (33%) that support their candidate 100%. 72% oppose the other candidate 80% or more in comparison to 63% that support their candidate 80% or more. Almost 3/4 of respondents think the their candidate is the lesser of two evils if you will.

The other questions:


60% Agree or Strongly Agree that VP choice impacts their vote.


68% identify themselves as conservative, 15% as having liberal preferences.


Party alignment correlates with the above

And for your vote:



Next we'll look at how political identification is associated with candidate support or opposition.

[Don Plumley]

First, we filter the results for those that identified themselves as having "Conservative" political beliefs (68% of respondents).


Opposition to the other candidate far outweighs their support for their preferred candidate.

Next, for those that have identified themselves as having "Liberal" political beliefs (15% of respondents).


Support for their preferred candidate is somewhat larger than their opposition to the other candidate.

The sample size of 96 responses is pretty small but should reflect a reasonable cross section of politically interested OT members.

Implications? Well, the data helps to explain the intensity of emotion and why there is a trend in responses from those that support the McCain camp are more often directed against Obama as opposed to responses that support Obama are more often defending his positions. So I understand it better, but frankly, this makes me a little sad.

If you are interested in further analysis, let me know.

[varmint]

next time you do a survey, i'd like to suggest a few questions. i remember a few here were supporting ron paul. where are they now? who are they going to vote for?

[pwd72s]

Now we know how this board is going to vote...not surprising to me. People who buy Porsches tend to be independent thinkers and self reliant types.

[Don Plumley]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

Now we know how this board is going to vote...not surprising to me. People who buy Porsches tend to be independent thinkers and self reliant types.

The data does imply that more conservatives buy Porsches than liberals.

By your definition then conservatives are independent thinkers and self-reliant. Self-reliant implies "I'll take care of this on my own, I don't need the government to help me." I unreservedly agree with that.

But I'd challenge independent thinkers. I think the "wacko liberal" that protests cutting down trees is the real independent thinker, challenging the status quo. I think it is easier to be a typical conservative as the dogma is pretty clear. Just a perspective to stir the pot.