NPR Troops split 50/50?

[Cattledog]

Did I get this right...on NPR's "All Things Considered" they interviewed troops in Baghdad who have already voted. 6 interviews, 3 voted Bush, 3 voted Kerry. Did anyone else hear this?

[Az_lefty]

1. 6 Troops???? They need to do some more interviews.

[dolstein]

2. That's too small a sample

Is supect that, for balance purposes, they interviewed and equal number of Bush voters and Kerry voters.

Realistically, if Kerry gets more than 25% of the military vote, he'd be doing pretty well.

[darthmix]

3. That's about as good as we can hope to do

with the military, but 6 soldiers isn't really a reliable sample. Still cool though.

[high density]

4. Margin of Error: 50%

That's interesting, but lets enlarge that sample size by about 100 times that and we'll have a bit better idea of how the troops are voting. ;)

[Xipe Totec]

5. So how many troops did they talk to

before they found the three * voters? :evilgrin:

[MidwestTransplant]

6. I do think that a lot of troops when polled would not say they would vote

for Kerry for fear of retribution.

[Bush was AWOL]

7. I'm willing to bet that the troops in Iraq

will not represent the military as a whole with their votes.

First of all you must understand that they are under tremendous pressure to vote for Bush. Most would never even admit publicly that they aren't voting for Bush even if that is the case.

With that said, I see Kerry scoring much higher with the troops in Iraq, and the troops that've been to Iraq, than he does with the military as a whole.

[Cattledog]

9. Each gave name rank and hometown...

in these were mini interviews where they were asked who they voted for. The Bush voters were typical "why change horses" type. The Kerry voters all spoke of their families and hardship.

[flowomo]

8. that wasn't a POLL...

just a report.... with a few voices on each side who had already voted. They interviewed Iraqis in the same report. I didn't like the pro-Kerry people they chose -- they really didn't have well expressed reasons for voting for him; the Bush voices echoed some campaign themes. That was my beef about the report.