Fun as so many found them to watch (although I preferred me my C-SPAN), and high though CNN’s ratings were, Nate makes excellent points about the downside of this newest debate-watching phenomenon. A couple excerpts from the longer post here, which is definitely worth the whole read:
It’s not that the squiggly lines aren’t fun to watch. Rather, they’re too much fun to watch. It’s hard to avert your eyes from them. It’s hard to separate your own, independent reaction from theirs. And it’s certainly hard to integrate back into to the non-squiggly universe once you’ve gotten hooked on the squigglys.
. . . The problem is that the squigglys may give thirty random strangers from Bumbleweed, Ohio just too damned much power to influence public perception. The squigglys influence the home viewers, the home viewers participate in the snap polls, the snap polls influence the pundits, the pundits influence the narrative and — voilà! — perceptions are entrenched.
Mind you, I’m not complaining about the post-debate snap polls really, like the ones that CNN and CBS conduct. I’d certainly rather look at those numbers than watch the pundits babble for hours on end, especially as pundits tend to watch for all the wrong things during the debates. But whereas the snap polls are scientific instruments with sample sizes of 500 or more, the probability of getting an unrepresentative reaction from a 30-person dial-testing group is much, much higher. First and foremost is the matter of sample size. You’d never see a poll conducted with just 30 respondents, because the margins of error would be around 18 (!) points.
angryXer 