to Virginia Tech instead of stay at home in Newport News and go to CNU.

What would you expect from an institution that graduates a grand total of 12% of its students and is led by that hack?

I'm surprised the students can still count after attending even one year at such a place.  

First of all I am a CNU student, and CNU graduated over 800 students last year out of a population of a little over 4,000. How is that 12%? I think you may want to check YOUR numbers.

Second, You are the kind of person who will attack any Republican no matter what their views are. Paul Trible supported John Miller in the 1st senate district last year and helped him get elected in a conservative district. Miller is the main reason the Senate is in the hands of Democrats. By the way, Miller was a PROFESSOR AT CNU. Guess he can't count either and must be an idiot!

Third, like him or not Paul Trible has done a lot for CNU, and in turn the economy of Newport News...which I can tell you is struggling. CNU was not even on the map 15 years ago and would not be today had Trible not been President.

Yes, Trible may seem like a typical politician and be a bit cheesy at times but I doubt he is a bigger hack than you are!

Oh and by the way, CNU is now just as hard to get into as Tech for you and hallcr.  

As a Tech student... no, it isn't.  Don't go there, man, or I will whip out rankings and shit the likes you have never seen.  You could've made your point without going after the Hokies.  If you want to roll out against the Hokie Nation, by all means, good luck.  But we make "Pit Bull" Sarah Palin look like a frickin' Chihuahua.

Quention Kidd's response to this horrible poll doesn't look good for you guys.  

"Polls are a snapshot in time."

Yeah, but that doesn't matter if you're taking picture with a cracked lens.  The model for the poll is wrong, therefore the poll is pretty much useless.  For a smart guy, Dr. Kidd sure didn't look in control there.  Though it pains me to compliment the Hoos, where's Larry Sabato when you need him?

Where he puts the whole election on Hampton Roads.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09...

And it's okay for you to compliment UVA. We have a few things going for us, too.

singing "Be True to Your School" now?  BTW, I think it's a little unfair to condemn an entire school for one poll out of one center at the school.  I know nothing about CNU, but it seems like a stretch, to say the least.

this polling debacle was strictly the responsibility of the pollster and the Center for Public Policy.  They should retract the poll, or correct with reasonable assumptions about African American and young voter turnout.

which appear to be attacking the whole school.  The poll is amateur hour, but for all I know CNU has a fantastic English lit program or accounting program or something else unrelated to political polling.  

Dan, hold on.  Not Walter said that CNU was just as hard to get into as Tech.  That's not an attack!  And from what I can see, it looks like it's pretty much a true statement--the College Board website give "percent admitted" numbers that show that CNU admits 54% of applicants, and Tech 67%.  I perceive Not Walter's comment to be a defense of CNU rather than a put-down of Tech.

As a parent of CNU students (one graduate, one current student), I have been pretty impressed by what I've seen there.  They do a nice job with their physics department.

Not to quibble too much, but acceptance rate isn't the only measure of how hard it is to get into a school. Students will tend not to apply for schools that they don't think they can get into. You also have to look at things like the average GPA of incoming freshmen (VT: 3.86, CNU: 3.65) and the average SAT (1238 and 1182).

But all that is beside the point, because those numbers are pretty good by most standards (UNCW, for example, which is a fine school, has an average incoming GPA of 3.74 and an average incoming SAT of 1160; Alabama has an average incoming GPA of 3.4 and an average incoming SAT of 1140). With the possible exception of California, there's not another state in the country with so many rock-solid public universities. There's W&M, JMU, VT, UVA, VCU; CNU is just another example. As Virginians, these are all our schools, and we should be proud of all of them.

George Mason, which is very quickly establishing itself as the UC-Irvine of the East Coast.

You may not want to tout your pride in VaTech by talking about pitbulls....

Did you want to talk about rankings? :)

You guys have a better ranking than us.  Like 35 places ahead.  Still, we get to feel a little better when we kick your ass in football every year. ; )

You guys have a better ranking than us.  Like 35 places ahead.  Still, we get to feel a little better when we kick your ass in football every year. ; )

...my burgeoning pro football career by not going to VaTech.  Geez! ;)

The one thing we say on Campus is, "Well, at least we can still beat the Hoos."

I worked in the admissions office last year so I know all the stats.
I was not attacking Tech, I was just defending my school which is just as good as Tech.  

because see, I went to UVA, and if you guys don't stop it I'll whip out "rankings and stuff" that will embarass the two of you :-P

We're on the same team.  Chill.  

-Fred

by Federal law and reported in the U.S. New and World Reports Guide to U.S. Colleges.  Go argue with him.

The only reason the CNU is hard to get into is that there are so many qualified college students from No Va that they've filled up the regional allocations at all of the other, more highly regarded, Va. public colleges and universities and settle for CNU out of financial necessity.  Their grades and SAT scores demonstrate they deserve better.  God knows their parents are paying enough of the State's income taxes to justify getting better.

Just curious -- is it the rate that graduates in 4 years?  Or the total percentage of incoming students who ultimately graduate?  The former sounds more plausible.  

which I'm sure Pres. Trible wouldn't mind.  BTW the 5 and 6 year grad rates are also abysmal.

I'm not addressing CNU directly here, as I don't know one way or the other.  However, I don't think the 4 year graduate rate is necessarily a measure of academic value -- I think it is more a measure of the financial resources to finish in 4 years, both in terms of the financial aid available and the financial resources of the parents. Isn't there a direct correlation between the 4 year graduate rate and the endowment per student ratio?  

EVEN with those screwed up cross tabs, McCain still can't crack 50 percent support.  

I'm a CNU student so I guess it's my duty to speak up...  

It is my understanding that CNU simply pays for these polls and sticks their name on it.  I didn't think CNU had anything to do with the sampling methodology.  Am I wrong? So is it really CNU's fault, or the crappy polling outfit they had conduct it?  

I suppose, come to think of it, that hiring a crappy outfit is CNU's fault.

(BTW, I'm an accounting major who can count just fine)

but this is the worst poll in human history. If I were in any way, shape or form associated with these pollsters, I'd be totally embarrassed.

at least Jim Gilmore didn't go to CNU.

Good point! :)

Mark Warner is up 24 points with these absurd numbers.  So he might be up by 35 points with something that remotely resembles reality.

48-43 Obama

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26...

But the Times/CBS News poll suggested that Ms. Palin's selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among female voters in general. White women are evenly divided between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama; before the conventions, Mr. McCain led Mr. Obama among white women by a margin of 44 percent to 37 percent.

By contrast, at this point in the 2004 campaign, President Bush was leading Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic challenger, by 56 percent to 37 percent among white women.

From CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITI...

Florida: McCain 48%, Obama 48%
Ohio: Obama 49%, McCain 47%
North Carolina: McCain 48%, Obama 47%
Indiana: McCain 51%, Obama 46%
Wisconsin: Obama 50%, McCain 47%

Actually, they look somewhat optimistic in North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio if you ask me, but they're certainly within the realm of plausibility, at least in Ohio and Florida (not sure about NC, any thoughts?).

But, I like the trend over the past few days, and just hope it holds.  If we go into the election up, even by a hair, then I feel we've got a good shot given our ground game.  I'd like 5% which would offset the closet racist factor, but as long as we're on top then we're still in this thing.

I think that is a tall order.

Higher African-American percentage than Virginia, lots of colleges and universities.  It would be a stretch, but it is within the realm of possibility, especially if the economy remains so important.

I think that any state that sends a racist scumbag like Jessie Helms repeatedly to Washington is probably not going to go for Obama.  Of course I could be proven wrong and, if so, I will not be complaining.

... and lots of more liberal folks have moved into the Charlotte area and the research triangle.  Still, I buy Nate at fivethirtyeight.com's argument that because of demographics, if Obama carries NC, he has already carried VA and won the election.  NC is unlikely to be a 'tipping point' state, it's more likely part of a landslide.

Which would suit me just fine, of course.  But I'm still very very nervous.  The election turned on a dime 3 weeks ago and went McCain's way, then this week it has gone Obama's.  If the election were tomorrow I would like our chances.  But this fed bailout of every single bank may make people think the economy is safe long enough for people to focus on more "important" things like lipstick, flag lapel pins, gay marriage, and brown scary people.

-Fred

The bounce McCain got was mainly over his shinny new penny.  It took 2 weeks for all but the republican base  to figure out is was a diversion and now we're back to pre-convention numbers.

I know it's close and we're not out of the woods, but the only thing McCain got from Palin was a solified base and quick look by the independants....who, it appears, don't really like what they see.

by the Republicans to begin laying the groundwork to "explain" a sudden flip on election day; I'll think more like this if other polls, interviews, studies, etc. begin popping up hinting at the same pro-Mac results around the country. Yes, this sounds like conspiracy theory, but I ask you, how many times have the Republicans said outright they will do "anything to win," (hence Sarah Palin and endless lies), that they "can't afford" to "let" Obama win. Remember the tortured explanations of why exit polls were wrong in battleground states? I wonder if the lesson the Republicans learned from that little problem has taught them that you have to plan in advance to explain outlier results from electronic machines (which have been hacked) or why votes have been lost or destroyed. Laugh now and cry later.  

Our city has those abominations called Diebold Voting Machines.  I suspect that this same sort of 'poll' results before the election will occur in every single swing state in order to hide the stealing of a THIRD election.  Unfortunately our officials haven't done squat to get rid of them while all the other states are busy decertifying them and hopefully replacing them.

a paper ballot or a paper receipt? Is there something about that in Virginia law somewhere?  Also, watch out for Republicans trying to supress the vote by showing up with lists of foreclosed homes and denying the former occupants/owners a vote because "they don't live at that address anymore."

They had it posted earlier on their front page like this poll is the clincher for McCain.  When I saw the sample size, I had a feeling that this was a suspect poll.  Why would you only poll 500 in a statewide race?  The Virginian Pilot ought to be embarrassed!  Well, at least they reported the other polls that show it closer.  

http://hamptonroads.com/2008/0...  

to the Pilot and point out the small sample, the ridiculousness of the poll, slam the Pilot for bias, and dare them to print it. Worth a try.

I know I was one who wrote in the comments section and posted in the comments the PPP poll. The comments have now been disabled and they beefed up the story with the PPP poll.

To be fair-the disabling of the comments doesn't necessarily follow from the Pilot's poor reporting of only the CNU poll at first - people have been posting some really nasty comments.

They do often.  Printed the story without taking a look at the sample.  The numbers would've revealed that this poll is total horse-crap.

The whole point of polls are that they're a representative sample of the electorate.  They could have polled 750 voters and only dropped the margin of error slightly and still had the same percentage of African-Americans in the poll.  Its the make-up of the electorate that matters, not the size of it.  A 500 person poll is pretty standard.

Only 10% of the sample is African American?  10%??  I'm not sure if it's been that low since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted.

Maybe he's jumping ahead? ***snark***

I was born and raised in Newport News. I actually have a lot of pride in CNU and if they offered a more diverse selection of courses, I probably would've gone there.

LOL. Just thought I'd mention that.

...the poll somehow still supports that McCain is winning......

Kidd argues that McCain is winning because his flawed poll shows McCain winning independents and running even with women.

Um, Quentin, no, that's not correct.

If the poll very badly undersamples black voters and young voters, then it very badly undersamples black women and young women.  So the subsample of women is not representative and is skewed toward McCain.

And if the poll undersamples Democrats overall and its constituent groups such as black voters and young voters, then it oversamples independents and perhaps Republicans to make them a larger share of the vote than they really will be.

Quentin seems very amateurish not to recognize that these subsamples are interlocking and interdependent, not mutually exclusive groups.

I forgot to mention in my comment immediately above that in addition to the subsample problems I pointed out there, the fact is these subsamples of women and independents are going to have much higher margins of error than the sample as a whole, reducing the values of the subsample numbers.  Independents in particular will have a VERY high error margin since they're one of 3 groups and in size far below one-half the total sample.

At some point the margin of error is so large that the numbers aren't worth much.

That's why you can see 2 polls in a state give the same result with the same error margin and confidence interval, but the subsamples can have wildly different results.  I see this all the time particularly between Rasmussen and SurveyUSA, who both use the same basic polling methodology (with notable differences in analyzing data).