If You Want Two-Thirds Of Americans To Agree That Violent Video Games Are More Dangerous Than Guns, All You Have To Do Is Ask The Right Americans

If you need some handy numbers to argue that violent video games are more dangerous than guns, Public Policy Polling has just delivered a gift-wrapped poll result especially for you. In the middle of a long poll attempting to suss out potential front runners for the 2016 elections, PPP decided to toss in a question comparing violent video games and guns.

There you have it. Violent video games are a "bigger safety threat" than guns, according to two out of three respondents. Seems pretty open and shut. Everyone cross out the word "gun" on your pet piece of legislation and replace it with "video game!" The nation is saved!

Many of you may be reaching for your guns/lower jaw/commenting implement. Before we start firing off mouths/angry wall o' text screeds/bullets, let's have a look at the methodology.

PPP surveyed 800 voters nationally from January 31st to February 3rd. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.5%. We oversampled 416 Democratic and 508 Republican primary voters with margins of error of +/-4.8% and +/-4.4% respectively. In Iowa between February 1st and 3rd we interviewed 313 Democratic and 326 Republican primary voters with margins of error of +/-5.5% and +/-5.4% respectively. This poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews.

This certainly seems above board. So, why do the results seem so surprising? Well, maybe it's the prevailing demographics of those surveyed. As pointed out in the comments at Kotaku, there are two factors that skew the results.

1. 72% of the respondents are older than 45.

2. The "violent video games" question was only posed to Republican primary voters.

Now, this data pretty much agrees with the stereotypical view that older people and Republicans trust guns more than they trust violent video games. Sure, there are plenty of outliers along the way, but the Republican Party has generally fought gun control laws, and older people are generally more distrustful of recent technology. In fact, given a narrow enough demographic, you could probably get poll results that indicates that "most Americans" believe cellphones are a bigger safety threat than depleted uranium.

So, what PPP has actually done is gift-wrapped a set of numbers useful for preaching to the converted. All it does is add to noise that surrounds this heated topic. Considering there's nothing else resembling that question in the other several dozen pages, one wonders why the question appears at all. Truly bizarre. DV.load("//www.documentcloud.org/documents/602442-ppp-release-national-207.js", { width: 550, height: 560, sidebar: false, text: false, page: 44, container: "#DV-viewer-602442-ppp-release-national-207" });

15 Comments | Leave a Comment..

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

View the original article here

AT&T's 4G LTE signal now covers more than 150 million Americans

AT&T crews had a busy week, lighting up 24 new markets with its 4G LTE signal. Major markets like Denver, Colorado; Louisville, Kentucky; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Daytona Beach and Pensacola, Florida now offer data speeds as much as ten times faster than 3G speeds. Smaller markets that now receive AT&T's 4G LTE signal include Twin Cities, Minnesota; Provo, Utah; York, Pennsylvania; Anne Arundel County, near Annapolis, Maryland; and Fairfield County near Danbury, Connecticut. All together, 150 million people can now access AT&T 4G LTE and that is twice the number that could access the carrier's speediest service last year. By the end of next year, that figure is expected to rise to 250 million people and hit 300 million people by 2015. As of today, the mobile operator covers 103 markets with LTE.

AT&T continues to trail Verizon in the number of markets it covers with LTE. Big Red's 4G LTE signal reaches into 440 markets, covering more than 250 million people although the carrier did have a huge head start. AT&T does have a comfortable lead over Sprint. That carrier just started building out its LTE pipeline in June.

source: Electronista

View the original article here