Saturday, September 10, 2011

Ron Paul deserves a proper graph


I like Ron Paul. I also like proper display of data. So I just couldn’t resist this one.

It looks like the mainstream media in America really don’t like Ron Paul, they don’t even like mentioning him when he gets high public ratings in debates. Not too long ago he came second in the poll taken after the Republican debate in Iowa and hardly got mentioned as a possible front runner at all.
A couple of days ago we had another Republican debate with Ron Paul performing strongly again, so strongly in fact that on NBC’s poll a whopping 57% of the public had said that Paul was the winner, not too shabby eh? Below is the poll they display on their site to show this crushing majority.

Oh, but wait a second, something is wrong here… can’t quite put my thumb on it… perhaps the proporations look a little off? Last time I checked 57% was more than twice that of 14%. We better go in for closer inspection.
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Let’s take a closer look at the top three candidates, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry
Below is how NBC would like you to see the results.

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And below in blue we have the real proportionality between these results, no bar-stretching involved.
When you see what the results actually look like it makes you realise the extent to which NBC are deciding to inflate the poor vote counts of both Romney and Perry.

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Finally, below we can see the True and exaggerated results overlaid.

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So the media now have a new way to ignore Ron Paul’s success, graphically.
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