Henry (jokingly) posted yesterday on a new AP/Yahoo poll that found pet owners more likely to support McCain than Obama, who does not have any pets. Monkey Cage readers know better than to believe that pet ownership matters, but just in case, here is Mark Blumenthal’s take-down of the AP story, complete with its own groaner of a title. The gist:
bq. Even without probing deeper into the subject, a fairly simple regression analysis would tell us if pet ownership shows a significant correlation with vote preference even after controlling for things like party, race, age, income and marital status. And while we would not expect an AP story to expound on multiple regression analysis, they could certainly tell us, in so many words, that pet ownership explains greater preference for Obama even after controlling for factors like party, race, age, income and marital status.