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First Read is an analysis of the day's political news, from the NBC News political unit. First Read is updated throughout the day, so check back often.

Chuck Todd, NBC Political Director

Mark Murray, NBC Deputy Political Director

Domenico Montanaro, NBC Political Researcher



What 'oversample' means

Posted: Thursday, March 27, 2008 12:56 PM by Domenico Montanaro

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
Hart/McInturff, the group that conducts the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, explains what "oversample" means.

TO: NBC News And The Wall Street Journal
FROM: Hart/McInturff
DATE: March 27, 2008
RE: Sample For March 24-25 Survey

As you know, the sample for the March 24-25 poll on race included an “oversample” of 100 African American voters. There has been some confusion as to exactly how these extra interviews were integrated into the survey; we hope this memorandum will clear up any misconceptions.

The main sample for the survey was a cross section of 700 registered voters nationally. As is the case with all of our usual polls, this sample is statistically representative of voters across the country, accurately reflecting the gender, age, educational, geographical, and racial makeup of the electorate. The column in the topline document labeled “All Voters”, as well as nearly all of the subgroups listed in the survey crosstabs, are among these cross section of 700. Eleven percent (11%) of these interviews -- or 77 interviews -- were with African Americans, which accurately reflects African Americans’ proportion of the electorate. Thus, African Americans are NOT over-represented in our national sample.

In addition to this national cross section, we interviewed an extra 100 African Americans to analyze the opinions of this group with a greater degree of statistical reliability. We combined these 100 only with the 77 African Americans that naturally fell into our national sample, for a total of 177 interviews with African Americans; these extra interviews were not combined with the full national sample of 700. The column in the topline document labeled “African Americans” shows the responses of these 177 respondents, as do the subgroups in the crosstabs for African Americans, African-American men, and African-American women.

The table below shows the margins of error for the three groups whose responses are shown in the topline document:

National cross section of voters: 700 interviews, +/- 3.7%
White voters: 520 interviews, +/- 4.3%
African-American voters: 177 interviews, +/- 7.4%

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Comments

Hillary Clinton is now focused on defeating Obama not in the primary but in the General.  She wants to damage him beyond repair so that he'll lose this year and she can run in 2012 against an old McCain who has continued the Bush agenda.
Thank you for explaining this further.
Anyone that is outraged today by the threat to the DCCC and the wealthy trying to buy our party donate
$.08 here
https://dccc.org/page/contribute/
New poll just out"...Over 85% of Michigan voters want a new election.Why does Senator Obama refuse to go along ????????
Every time Hillary gives a major speech, her campaign releases the remarks beforehand.  Isn't it fair to think that both she and the campaign have gone over the speech in detail before they send it to the press?   This campaign doesn't leave a lot to chance.  So how exactly can it be "misspeaking" when she made her Bosnian claims last week?
OBAMA IS A "FLAWED " CANDIDATE, HE WILL NEVER WIN THE GENERAL ELECTION.
Bill Clintons daydreaming.................
How will I become the first male/first lady if the GOP continually play my finger-pointing impeachment process on a "loop"?

Along with:


"that depends on what your definition of is, is"

Jennifer Flowers

Vince Foster

Paula Jones

Monica Lewinsky

Whitewater

Jim & Susan McDougal

Frank Giustra-Kazakhstan-Uranium affair

Our "business agreement" marriage of convenience


and Hillary's:

Ireland tales

Bosnia lies

Vote to go to war in Iraq

rules of the DNC

Norman Hsu


.................Looks like my dream of roaming the white house and interviewing future interns was just a fairy tale after all!
thank you for the clarification
Thanks for that explanation, that was super helpful!
Thanks for the clarification. otherwise people wee gonna get there panties in abunch thinking that you favored teh AA's to tip the scale in obama's favor.B/c some people seem to think that NBC is more pro Obama when clearly you are far more pro Clinton it's just that over all you favor dems over repubs so are somewhat baiased to both dem candidates.
This country really needs Obama, just so we all can finally be truly be at easy with the issue of race and give one another the benefit of the doubt.

I can't imagine anyone would think msnbc that biased that they would sample most AAs when race is so relevant to the polls. That's more FIX News' style.
Don't understand. If 11% was representative of the population, why did you need to put in another 100 AAs for "statistical reliability"? Seems to me that if you throw in extra of one population, you've destroyed your reliability. If your sample was correct, what was missing? What caused you to think something was wrong? Or, is it simply, you didn't like the answer you got?
Mathew Berger, reporter for NBC, uses the headline "Clinton Tatics turn off some Superdelegates".  Upon reading his article,I discovered he based this headline upon what one superdelegate said.  He should not be allowed to post because this is manipulative and incorrect reporting.  Voters do not need to hear from reporters who are biased.  Cut him off!
Ok, so in addition to the Governor of Puerto Rico, Anibal Acevedo Vilá who is a Democratic Party superdelegate who has endorsed Obama and today was charged with election law violations, Obama also has also been advised by the following people.

Besides Governor of Puerto Rico, Anibal Acevedo Vilá, there was also Obama’s foreign policy adviser and Harvard professor, Samantha Power who resigned after her “Monster” comment.

Or what about Obama’s Senior Economic Policy Advisor Austan Goolsbee who had the meeting with the Canadians and the Obama campaign insisted that no conversations had ever taken place with any of its senior ranks and representatives of the Canadian government, only to turn around and acknowledge the meeting after the Associated Press obtained a Canadian government memo showing that the meeting did in fact take place.

Then there is the President and CEO of Analysis Corp, John O.Brennan who is an Obama contributor and Advisor whose company employed two of the employees who are accused of improperly looking at the passport files of Barack Obama and the other two presidential candidates.

This story broke this pat Saturday, March 22 and the media TOTALLY buried the story.

From the moment the story broke about Obama’s passport file being breached on Thursday March 20, 2007, MSNBC covered extensively and at length the breach of Obama’s passport file day and night until about 2 PM on Saturday March 22.  

That happened to be the same time that CNN started reporting about the employees who had breached Obama’s passport file and the fact that the CEO of the company that they worked for is an advisor to Barack Obama.

John O. Brennan who is the President and CEO of Analysis Corp is also a former senior CIA official and former interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center and advises Barack Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues.   He has also personally contributed $2,300 to the Obama campaign.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/22/passport.files/

On Friday March 21, 2007, Sen. Obama called for an investigation into how his security of the passport file was breached.  “One of the things that the American people count on in their interactions with any level of government is that if they have to disclose personal information, that it stay personal and stay private," Obama said in Portland, Oregon on Friday March 21, 2007.

"And when you have not just one but a series of attempts to tap into people's personal records, that's a problem not just for me but for how our government is functioning," he said.

Obama said he expected "a full and thorough investigation" by the administration in conjunction with congressional oversight committees.

From the moment that the passport file breach story broke until the story about O.Brennan broke, Barack Obama, his campaign and his supporters demanded that heads roll and that investigations that would lead to the prosecution of anyone involved be conducted immediately.

We now know (not as a result of NBC, MSNBC, CBS, or ABC), but thanks to CNN and FOX that Obama and his campaign are directly linked to the CEO of the very company that employed the individuals that breached Obama’s passport file.

Barack Obama and his entire campaign owe the American people, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, the Bush administration, and the State Department an immediate explanation and more importantly an apology concerning his relationship with John O. Brennan.

But I guess we won't see or hear NBC/MSNBC giving this story the attention it deserves and giving it the amount of attention that was given to Barack Obama’s file being breached given their sickening affection for Obama.  

If Senator Clinton had a Sr. Advisor that was the CEO of the very company that employed the contractors that had breached Obama’s passport file, Obama, his supporters, and the media would be screaming bloody murder and demanding that Senator Clinton drop out of the race, not to mention the fact that the Obama Campaign would certainly look to have someone prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for such a breach.

No wonder MSNBC's ratings are in 3rd place behind FOX and CNN.  It serves MSNBC right.  

Obama has always argued that experience is not, and should not be the most primary qualification for a Presidential candidate.  Obama has always maintained that if he surrounds himself with the right ADVISORS, then his personal experience should be at best, a secondary qualification.  He maintains that the advice he receives from others and his judgment alone should be the Primary Qualification for any Presidential candidate.

Well it’s obvious that Obama doesn’t have the necessary experience and little by little we are seeing that he is being advised by very questionable people.

The very people that are advising Obama should cause people in this country to call into question his judgment, and his judgment should be called into question at this point considering he claims that judgment is really the only necessary requirement for anyone to be President of the United States of America.

Obama is not fit to be the 44th President of the United States of America.

let matthews explain these polls---we get a chance to see him drool down his chin when speaks of Obama.
awww why did you go and explain this oversample thing now all the clinton suporters have to go back to their cauldrons of hate to stew up more racist fiction.
If Obama does not win the election in the fall, HIllary will be remembered as the Ralph Nader of 2008!


Just like the original Nader, the Clinton Legacy will NEVER recover.

Hope its worth it Billery.
This is pathetic.  You have begun responding to Hillary supporters who disagree with you or your numbers.  Seriously...you call yourselves "journalists?"  Laughable at best.  I am fed up with the media coverage, which saturates the cable networks, of this primary election.  And it is indisputable that MSNBC has been clearly biased in favor of Obama.  I wonder what outsiders would say when taking in one of our 24/7 news days.  They would probably get sick of you guys and turn the channel.  That's what I've done.  I find it a little disheartening that I have to watch the coverage of several news networks on one story in order to get a fair and accurate report.  I think the media needs to get their house in order.  And the way that chasing the "hot story" has influenced the way in which this election has been decided is also frightening.  Sensationalism, anyone?  I guess really everyone is the victim of tabloid journalism.  
If Obama does not win the election in the fall, HIllary will be remembered as the Ralph Nader of 2008!


Just like the original Nader, the Clinton Legacy will NEVER recover.

Hope its worth it Billery.
Thanks FR for this informative post.
Whether "African-Americans" were represented disproportionately or not, this should just be another "red flag" for democrats:

If Billary (yes, I do mean BILLary, he is campaigning more than she is!) manages to get this nomination; black democrats WILL NOT show up for her!

Not only them, but it's obvious that the new, young voters will not be out in large numbers, either. This equals a win for McCain; and four more years of Bush politics.

Can we allow this happen?
Funny how Clinton supporters had no problem last week when Obama's numbers dipped in the polls. Now that he has successfully fended off their latest attacks, rebounded, and again enjoys a resounding lead, they're crying foul. People please, take a look in the mirror the next time you get the tic-like urge to call us 'whinners'.

Get use to it. Obama's a winner.

Pulling for Obama'08
.... and you couldn't find anyone who thought Hillary was honest ?

She had a 37% positive rating ?
Isn't that George Bush territory ?

37% of the American people approve of bubonic plague
Hillary is is good company


Good work, MSNBC

Don't apologize to the Clintonistas for telling the truth !!

Signed
the Incredible Kiss*ss
So far I have not heard any proof that Obama EVER took his children to hear the sermons that are the subject of controversy.  Your reporters (Buchanan, Scarborough) keep making these statements.  It bothers us that they are so loose with such potential damaging statements.  Obama's children are very young;  one wasn't even born on 9/11/01.  Since Obama has said he has heard controversial sermons from Rev. Wright, I would be surprised if he brought his children.
Items that your poll does not consider are as follows:
1. difference in voter turnout (very important when compared to McCain)
2. Christian vs non-Christian (important with regards to Obama pastor) Christans understand that no one can turn their back on a person that showed them the pathway to Jesus Christ. Obama not doing this shows strength of character, as well as good judgmnt in the eyes of God. I am a White Southern Baptist.
NEW POLL:

95% of all US Voters think a do-over vote in Michigan and Florida would be a waste of time and money as this nomination process is over. Let those delegates be seated so they can enjoy the festivities of the Convention as they have their votes tallied along with the others in acknowledging their selection for the nominee who has already won this nomination - Barack Obama.    
GOD BLESS AMERICA
NOT GOD DAMN AMERICA

C'MON EVERYBODY LETS ELECT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA AND WE CAN ALL UNITE AND SING ALONG UNITY... GOD DAM AMERICA AND NOT GOD BLESS AMERICA

NICE WORK DEMOCRATS....LA LA LA LA LA LAAAA
http://twocanpete.blogspot.com/
In other words the media is hell bent on making sure that Obama wins and they will skew the data which ever way it takes to get the numbers they want.
Question:  If whites accounted for about 70% of the vote and blacks accounted for 11%, where does this leave Latinos, who now number 15% of the population?
Would the results have been different, or was the survey one involving whites and blacks only?  Just asking.
How in heavens name do you know they were African Americans. Did you see them? or Assume


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