The 0% suppression tactic

One of the most insidious tactics used in the suppression of non-conformist thoughts among Black American voters involves telling them that a vote for the Republican candidate would be to betray the long struggle against racism in America.

President Biden proclaims They're going to put you back in chains!

And, lest any Black American have any doubts that exploitative Democrat politicians who never have to compete for their votes really have their best interests at heart, the media bombard us with the preposterous notion that no Blacks will vote for the white candidate.

I guess we are to assume that Condi and Mia can't wait to run in to that voting booth to cast a vote for Obama-Biden.

After all, the President and his team have given us high unemployment at home, insecurity abroad, and bloodbath in Chicago. How can that be anything but success?

A recent addition to the chorus was the story of a poll where

President Obama snared 94 percent of African Americans surveyed, the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney got nuthin', zilch, niente, a big fat 0 percent.

The numbers came from a statistically significant sample of more than 100 African-American voters out of 1,000 total voters in the poll, Mark Murray, senior political editor for NBC News, told [Jonathan Capehart]

Well, first, let's point out that the phrase statistically significant sample lays bare the fact that neither Senior Political Editor for NBC News Mark Murray nor Jonathan Capehart understand much of anything about Intro Stats.

Apparently, everyone agrees that President Obama won 95% of the Black vote in 2008. If the level of support has not changed since then, simple arithmetic shows that roughly one out of 169 random samples of size 100 of Black voters would show that all 100 respondents supported President Obama. But, that's not what the survey showed. 94 out of the 100 respondents supported him in this poll. If the real support is 95%, the probability of obtaining a sample with at least 94 respondents supporting him is 61.6%. Truly not exceptional.

Apparently, the six Black respondents did not want to take the next step and declare that they were going to vote for Romney-Ryan in November. Maybe that's because they don't know. Or, maybe, in this environment, they do not want to tell anyone else.

The McCain-Palin ticket received 4% support from Black voters in 2008. If we assume that is the true level of support for the Romney-Ryan ticket this year, 1 out of every sixty random sample of 100 Black voters would be expected to show no support.

That is a much higher chance than winning any lottery jackpot. So, there is really nothing extra-ordinary about this poll.

Why does everyone constantly talk about it?

For one simple reason: Mia and Condi's speeches were inspiring to me. Inspiration tends to be contagious. The last thing the Democrats want is for such inspiration to spread among a voting bloc they have taken for granted for a long time. Maybe that's why MSNBC anchors switched away from the coverage of the Republican convention every time a Republican who did not fit their caricature of a stereotype was on stage.