Comments on: An Honest Comparison of Obama & McCain’s Senate Voting Records

By: J Cole

J Cole — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:46:17 +0000

Thank you very much for this info.

Jason, it may seem sad but there are still people arguing about Obama’s 100% “Present” record and defending McCain’s strong 100% yay/nay track record. It would be nice if the media reported useful statistical info like this to set the record straight.

I’d ask, what was the count for Ralph Nadir, but he never served in Congress.

By: Andrew Blanco

Andrew Blanco — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:06:41 +0000

B. Ginsberg,

Thanks for catching that mistake! The original data most definitely had Obama’s Yay’s & Nay’s reversed. The Excel attachment has been updated as well as the post.

What just happened with this post is exactly what should happen with any kind of analysis of data. It got peer reviewed.

Mind you, the peer review should be performed BEFORE the material is posted, but hey, mistakes happen. You live you learn.

By: Jonathan Carr

Jonathan Carr — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:50:47 +0000

I recommend seeing comment #1 in this post.

By: Greg Molyneux

Greg Molyneux — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:24:43 +0000

It can happen to the best of us.

I recommend updating the data in the post, thanking B. Ginsberg for catching the error.

By: Andrew Blanco

Andrew Blanco — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:22:29 +0000

Wow. My apologies. I officially need to learn Excel or not post any more analysis of numbers.

Thanks.

By: Greg Molyneux

Greg Molyneux — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:18:26 +0000

B. Ginsberg is right. Andrew, your numbers in the post do not match the numbers represented in your spreadsheet. I went ahead and used the summation function for each column and came up with the following results:

Obama 2005-2008

No Vote: 228
Yay: 253
Nay: 87

McCain 2005-2008

No Vote: 300
Yay: 136
Nay: 132

By: Andrew Blanco

Andrew Blanco — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:10:30 +0000

Mr. Ginsberg, do it by hand if you want to be accurate. Thats how I got my first set of numbers, and then I double checked with a computer.

By: B. Ginsberg

B. Ginsberg — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:45:34 +0000

Are you sure you have your Yay’s and Nay’s correct for Obama? I believe you have them backwards. I did a quick count on the voting record site and came up with 254 Y’s and 89 N’s. Granted I was just counting using Find whole word Y or whole word N so easily could be off a few but I found the opposite results as you.

By: Jason Morgan

Jason Morgan — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:13:22 +0000

So, MIAS, you are advocating the political tactic of counter-arguing but still leaving everyone in the dark as to the true nature of the situation. You must already be a politician, or just as lazy as Andrew.

By: MIAS

MIAS — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:29:17 +0000

Dude, you did a good job. I just refused to go count all those votes to battle naysayers. I it’s quite interesting how the right can throw whatever argument out there, but when someone does the work to point out the truth, it gets criticized in a way that the original argument hasn’t and then it’s asked to show things that the orginal argument didn’t show.

Again, good job and if someone wants to know more they can go look it up for themselves.

The only thing I’m curious about is Hillary’s votes, which might show he was pretty much doing what his party wanted for some of the votes (but I’ll look for myself)& reflect them both being out there campaigning. I’m pretty sure that campaigning in 2008 counted for alot of NV for both, but moreso for Obaman since he was on the trail longer.