Friday, January 25, 2008

The Trouble With Sub-Samples

Andrew Sullivan is intrigued by this recent South Carolina poll, which appears to show that Obama has a huge lead among Latino voters in the state. But there's one problem:
Hispanics only make up 1% of the expected electorate. In a survey of 685 people, that means the subsample of Hispanics was no more than 7-15 people- not exactly a statistically significant sample.