No one asked me...

Yahoo news reported today:
Poll: Racial views steer some white Dems away from Obama
http://news.yahoo.com/page/election-2008-political-pulse-obama-race

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent," responsible for their own troubles.

Mark the sentence, please. One-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks.

Well...that's a lie.

One third of 2,227 adults --- 2,227 adults who participated in poll, --- harbored negative views towards blacks.

Now - who were these adults? How were they selected?

Here's a bit of the article: The AP-Yahoo News poll used the unique methodology of Knowledge Networks, a Menlo Park, Calif., firm that interviews people online after randomly selecting and screening them over telephone.

Okay - there ya go. Who these days answers their telephone? I don't. I've got call screening, and if its someone I don't know, I don't answer the phone.

Were these 2,227 people scattered all over the country? Or were they in one state? Etc. etc.

We don't know how the pollsters were chosen, we know nothing about their background. All we know is that based on the example of 2,227 adults (did that include 18 year olds, 80 year olds?) this Yahoo article states categorically that an entire percentage of people think this or believe that.

So if black folks (and whites) read that they'll say, Gee, we are a racist country. (Will I be generalizing too much if I say that 75% of people who read that article won't bother to go down to the very bottom sentence to see exactly how many people took part in the poll?)