SPORTS POLL Who is your favorite local athlete? Steve Francis: 14% David Carr: 9% Jeff Bagwell: 13% Yao Ming: 59% Roger Clemens: 5% Total Votes: 3296 http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/sports/basketball/index.html Had there not just been a poll where Francis was No. 1? Looks like it did not take him long to let that one be outdated...
I think that you have the internet vote and the poll that was conducted and printed (w/Steve #1) was done by calling fans.
The poll reported in the Chronicle was done by resident pollster Dr. Richard Murray from UH. Online polls are VERY different in results from well-conducted phone polls simply because internet polls have dramatically skewed demographics. They are almost NEVER an accurate reflection of how the general public feels.
That's correct, and I'd also add that internet polls are self-selecting, which also tend to skew the numbers away from what you'd see in phone surveys. Internet polls are more or less worthless for purposes of inference.
Okay, so the poll is only an accurate reflection of how the people who went to the Chronicle Sports page online and decided to participate in the poll feel...good enough for me.
Even though the ClutchFans poll currently on the front page is a "selected" sample (not random by any stretch of the imagination) the result is all the more stunning. Out of almost 1200 respondents, almost half voted to trade the "franchise" player. This is the vote of some of the most "hardcore" Rocket's fans in and out of Houston.
