Zogby poll shows 42% of Dems polled think Bush caused/allowed 9/11 to happen

HotAir has a post up about a Zogby poll that shows 42% of the Democrats polled believe that President Bush either knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance and allowed them to happen or that he actually ordered them himself. Go have a read over there and follow the links to other folks running analysis on the numbers. Allahpundit (the author of the HotAir post) focused a bit of attention on the numbers showing up in the 18-24 age category that the “9/11 Truth” organization is touting. Those numbers came in that 72% of the respondents in that category believe Bush allowed the attacks to occur, which the Truthers are implying shows that they’ve got real influence with the youth vote.

Of course, if you take an actual look at the data Allahpundit points us to, you’ll note that the entire category of 18-24 year-olds represented in the polling sample amounts to just 45 people. Of those 45, 33 said Bush “Let it happen”. I’m finding it very, very hard to credit this response. When I was in college, my fraternity alone had more than 45 members. If you were basing an analysis of our age category on the answers you’d have received by walking into our house just before one of our meetings and posing a question, I daresay your conclusions about the feelings of the age group as whole would be suspect, to say the least.

Which leads me to the 2 observations about this poll that I’d like to share. First, the sample size is 988 people. That’s a fair number, but it’s below the threshold of a statistically significant sample for the voting populace of the United States if I’m recalling my stats course from a couple of years ago. The sample size should have been nearly double that to cover a population the size of ours.

Second, what was the geographic distribution of the polling sample? If the 988 people contacted were all from the New England area, I’d expect a completely different set of answers than if those same folks were from the MidWest. None of that information is available at the links provided – the 9/11 Truth site only shows the results page. I’d like to think that Zogby’s not going to run a bogus polling sample but you have to provide your methodology to be completely transparent. Of course, the poll was commissioned by the 9/11 Truth people so it’s possible Zogby’s not at liberty to release that info.

I have friends and family who are Democrats and none of them are shy about telling me what they think of the war, the President, or this Administration. None of them have once suggested that President Bush was responsible for ordering or allowing the 9/11 attacks so I have to wonder where Zogby dug these people up.