It’s the reason why the number have dropped a bit. In the upcoming debate there shouldn’t be a concern about her foreign affairs experience, how many governors of states have this experience? McCain’s the expert in this matter, and he’s the one running for President.

If she allowed to be herself and hammer Joe Biden failed voting record on foreign policy like how he wants to intervene in civil wars and turns his back in on an African tribe in 1994 which was getting killed by another tribe by the tens of thousands.

If she allowed to be herself the numbers will slightly rise again.

As to the ‘don’t know’ votes: the tallies of ‘approve’ and ‘disapprove’ in the two polls add to 87% and 88%, respectively. That leaves room for 10% to move between polls from approval to neutrality, or from neutrality to disapproval, assuming the third choice was indeed ‘don’t know’ or something similarly neutral.

I shall chase down a copy of ‘How to Lie With Statistics’ — thanks for the tip!

Yes, there are issues to do with how sampling is performed and what may be inferred about the population, but let’s assume that the 3-4% slop typically claimed for polls is pretty much OK. And, no, if that is the case, Palin’s numbers could not shift by that 10% and have it go into the “don’t know” bin. “Don’t know” in the second poll was a mere 2% of respondents.

And it is not established that any former approvers of her now disapprove. Are the poll respondents the same? Even if they are, the 42% that approve her today were not necessarily among the 52% that approved of her previously (though it does seem likely). Also, the 10% that changed their position from approval could have sqitched to ‘no comment’ (or whatever the null postion was) rather than disapproval.

Fun with numbers.

Palin is still popular tho, with a huge crowd who think she just needs to be “let off the leash”.

That sounds like a great idea to me ;>