NYT journalist blasted for conducting six-person survey on impeachment

[Yoopy]

Last edited Thu Sep 26, 2019, 05:35 AM - Edit history (1)

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[JI7]

1. lol, swing voters ...... , most fools who go out of their way to be on focus groups

and other panels of undecided dumbfucks are just attention whores .

[TheRealNorth]

2. Swing Voters

So swing voters don't mind that taxpayer money is being used to leverage Trump's re-election campaign? If you mean they are actually Republican's that might be angry with Trump about the tariffs - yeah I can believe that.

[sharedvalues]

10. Worse

Not only is Trisha a Trump nut who wrote a book about Trump,
The NYT pretends that she’s some random voter. But they’ve talked to her FOUR times in the last year!!!!!

Link to tweet

[Blue_true]

22. Wow. Anyone that believes in our democracy and has a NY Times subscriptions should cancel that

subscription ASAP.

[barbtries]

3. from 6 voters she's going to predict the future. it's a joke.

Link to tweet

Tough.

“Swing voters” is a euphemism for Trump voters who don’t want to admit it.

[BlueMTexpat]

4. This is NOT

"journalism."

[DetlefK]

5. If you conduct a poll with 6 people, your result has a statistical error of 40.8%.

That's simple Poisson-statistics. 1 divided by the square-root of 6.

So... 100% +/- 40.8% of people are against impeachment...

EDIT: For an accuracy of 10%, you need a poll with 100 people.
For 1%, you need a poll with 10,000 people.
For 0.1%, you need 1,000,000 people.

[sharedvalues]

9. Use the binomial confidence interval for this

But your overall point is highly valid: small sample size!

[DetlefK]

13. Oh, I don't even want to calculate the confidence-interval. A sigma of 40.8% is bad enough as it is.

[sharedvalues]

15. Warning nerd out

Binomial Standard error is larger near 0.5 than the extremes (0, 1.0).

But note these are not independent samples. At least one of the six is a Trump partisan (suckered by lies of rightwing press) that the Times keeps going back to. Inexplicably.

[DetlefK]

17. 100% of people sitting in my chair agree with you.

[TheRealNorth]

21. That believe that is also assumes random sampling .....

From the population you want to characterize.

[ck4829]

6. Wow...

[IronLionZion]

7. "Swing voters" yeah sure

I bet a lot of Trump votes are "swing voters"

[sharedvalues]

8. They talked to Trisha the Trump nut FOUR TIMES in last year

And they call her a “swing voter”!!!!!!!!



Something is very wrong at NYT Politics.

Like this guy says, the Times needs to fire their editors

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[sharedvalues]

11. Tavernise's greatest hits: love letters to the right wing

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[sharedvalues]

12. More on Tavernise normalizing rightwing crazy

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[sharedvalues]

14. Ooh ooh even more "Tavernise spent last 3 years writing same story"

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[Joe941]

16. Fake news.

[moonseller66]

18. Corrected Headline and story

Republican Reporter interviews 6 Swinger Republicans who always vote Republican.

These six swingers support trump and his right to grab female parts. The six couldn't answer anymore questions as they were on their way to a FLorida Spa.

Or something like that.

Makes as much sense!

[sharedvalues]

19. Even more! ALL of these six are Trumpers. WTH, NY Times?

Link to tweet

[demmiblue]

20. Here is the unrolled thread:

No, the New York Times did not talk to six “swing voters” about impeachment. The article quotes a handful of devout GOP voters who the NYT has repeatedly interviewed multiple times. A thread....

Link to tweet

The NYT article includes an interview with Donna, presented as a swing voters who doesn’t favor impeachment.

The problem? NYT interviewed the same woman last year. She voted for Trump and the Republicans again in the Midterm.

This isn’t a swing voter.

The NYT article also includes an interview with Trisha, who admits she’s been to 23 Trump campaign rallies. 23! She wrote a book about Trump! NYT has interviewed her at least twice in the past two years.

She’s a Trump fanatic, not a swing voter.

The NYT article also includes an interview with Reggie. Reggie was highlighted in an AP story last year entitled ‘In the heart of Trump country, his base remains unshaken.’ Reggie has a portrait of Robert E. Lee hanging in his living room.

No, Reggie is not a swing voter.

The NYT is repeating its exact same 2016 reporting antics, presenting devout Trump supporters as some sort of forgotten swing constituency. Why does this keep happening, and why do they keep going back to the same individuals for interviews?

How frequently has this happened? @gregpinelo not only guessed the NYT would do this ‘swing voter on the street’ reporting, but correctly guessed exactly how many interviews they’d reference!

Link to tweet

The reporter deleted the tweet.

But the tweet isn’t the issue. This type of ‘swing voter’ reporting is an issue. Talking to the same voters and saying they’re representative is an issue. It’s not news that devout Trump fans are hardened in their views.

Link to tweet

To note: this has been an issue for years. In 2017 @nycsouthpaw found the same reporter wrote a story about a Trump supporter who still supports Trump. The article never mentioned the supporter was actually a GOP convention delegate.

Stories like this in reputable newspapers matter immensely. They shape narratives. They persuade elected leaders at the very highest levels of government. But they’re also wildly misleading. These aren’t random swing voters that should have a platform in the New York Times.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1177175443335766016.html