Mac Users More Liberal Than Windows Users 638
adeelarshad82 writes "A recent survey conducted on 400,000 people — in which 52% of respondents were self-described PC (Windows) people, 25% were Mac users and 23% were neither — showed that Mac users are more politically liberal than their PC-using counterparts. 58% of Mac users were 'liberal,' as compared to 38% of PC users. Amongst other things, the survey also indicated that Mac users were, on average, more urban, younger and more educated than PC users, which could potentially be a contributing factor toward being more liberal."
Averages, not absolutes (Score:4, Informative)
There is at least one notorious outlier [rushlimbaugh.com].
Re:And... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Imbalanced Survey? (Score:4, Informative)
Misleading Statistics. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Homosexuality (Score:5, Informative)
you're using the question mark sign incorrectly, it's for questions.
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Where do you think X-boxes come from, Detroit? There's no such thing as a liberal corporation. Look at the stink MS raised about Washington state taxes. Nor is there any such thing as a patriotic corporation. Their only agenda is more profits. Their Bible is the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition (happy Easter!).
Re:Suprising no. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is kind of stupid/obvious (Score:5, Informative)
OS X has a walled garden?
Entertainment mistaken for science (Score:5, Informative)
Firstly, the sample refers to Hunch users only. This is not a general population sample and should not be applied to the general population. While they failed to spell out the implications of this important bit of context, Hunch did at least disclose prominently that the survey was of Hunch users, unlike PC Mag which seemed to reluctantly mention it once. The Slashdot summary however ignores it completely and thus implies reference to the general population.
Almost a quarter of those who actually responded described themselves as neither PC or Mac. The sample is stratified and the terms "PC user" and "Mac user" no longer exist, you only have the (markedly different) categories of "self-described PC people", "self-described Mac people" and "neither". To their credit TFA not only discloses this, in the header no less, but makes it a theme of the infographic. PC Mag seems to mention it once then forget. The Slashdot summary, however, appears not to have even noticed that there is any distinction:
52% of respondents were self-described PC (Windows) people, 25% were Mac users and 23% were neither
These aren't relevant to each other, it's like a random collection of figures that add to 100% by coincidence. Or... Hmm. Subby appears to be promoting a Pro-Mac bias but perhaps this is really a subtle dig, intentionally implying the terms "Mac users" and "self-described Mac people" are one and the same? Have I had my own humour fail and underestimated the summary?
There's some rather odd statistical presentation. For example "PC people are 33% more likely than Mac people to say that two random people are more different than alike". 33% looks like a big difference, but "more likely" is relative and says nothing about significance: the same figure is arrived at when 8 of the 202k PC people say that and only 3 of the 97k Mac people do (0.000040% is 33% more than 0.000026%). Why have they not simply said the full result, the almost ubiquitous way to present the result of a binary question? Any time you see statistics presented this way alarm bells should ring because it's a great way to grossly over-emphasise trivial things.
Noted that there is no control group, no attempt to compare survey results with statistics of the general population simply in order to gauge reliability. This is despite the generally accepted view that questionnaires are utter horse shit and anyway Hunch isn't exactly a reliable scientific source.
With the Hunch infographic, none of the above matters because the whole thing is presented as slightly tongue-in-cheek entertainment. Unlike PC Mag or the Slashdot summary which appears to take it quite seriously.
and what "liberal" means? (Score:5, Informative)
Liberal by which definition? American or European? AFAIK liberal in USA means "socialist" while in the rest of the world liberal means someone who likes freedom.
Re:Fits my preconceptions. (Score:5, Informative)
Or if you want to delve into Sci Fi geekery, read Heinlein's stuff, or for a fun read try Michael Z. Williamson's Freehold series. That will give you a decent dose of libertarianism.
Re:Liberalism in the US (Score:2, Informative)
That is so f**ing stupid.
If you weaken the (at least semi-democratically elected) govenrment, there's nothing left to exercise power
EXCEPT the corporate oligarchs.
Re:CNN story (Score:4, Informative)
They surveyed 202 thousand PC users.
They surveyed 97 thousand Mac users.
Of PC users, 109 thousand had completed a four year degree and 93 thousand had not.
Of Mac users, 65 thousand had completed a four year degree and 32 thousand had not.
Conclusion: PC users have more combined education years than Mac users do. PC use is more egalitarian in that it reaches more deeply into the less educated among us.
And what kind of statement is this?
52 percent of Mac people live in a city, while PC people are 18 percent more likely than Mac people to live in the suburbs and 21 percent live in rural areas
My interpretation: 52% of Mac people live in a city, 48% of Mac people live ex-Urbana. PC people have a 52*1.18 = 61% chance of being suburbanites, with a 21% Rural component, leaving only 18% of all PC people living in a city. Put into sample sizes, there were 36 thousand Urban PC users and 50 thousand Urban Mac users. This versus 166 thousand PC users outside the city and 47 thousand Mac users.
While I think the proportional representation of Mac users is consistent with my expectations, I'm very surprised by the HUGE swing in market share from an urban to ex-urban market...surprise supporting a strong degree of skepticism that they've actually interpreted their own data correctly.
Re:This is kind of stupid/obvious (Score:3, Informative)
It's hyper-sensitive replies like yours that give us Mac users a bad name in the community. I'm not trolling anything, because I'm an avid Mac user and Apple supporter. I prefer the walled-garden approach because it allows stuff to just work and prevents all the headaches associated with the free-for-all mentality of the PC market.
Telling me that OSX allows for any third party apps and open source stuff is kind of like trying to convince the Pope he's catholic.
No Springtime for Hitler (Score:5, Informative)
> Like if you were trying to get away with saying "black people commit more crimes," you might say "urban populations commit more crime." Urban means "lives in the city."
Urban doesn't mean black even then, unless someone doesn't speak English. The formal definition applies.
Urban people commit more crime because of simple math. More people closer together means more opportunities for crime, and a city means more laws.
I agree the statement "black people commit more crimes" is unacceptable, almost as a rule, due to the ambiguity inherent in the sentence. In addition, there is a perceived racism in the statement "black people commit more crimes," bolstered in legitimacy by a combination of factors: (1) black people are arrested disproportionately. For example, NYC spends ~$100M on arrests, largely of young black men, of people with small quantities of pot. However, studies show that white people use pot much more than black people do. (2) People of lower socioeconomic status commit more visible crimes, and they are disproportionately black, so saying black people implicitly creates a tenuous causal connection between "black people" and "crimes" in your statement. (3) On a related vein, "black people commit more crimes" is ambiguous. It could be either an empirical statement about the current state of affairs, or a truism. If the latter, it would be highly problematic for our entire notion of egalitarianism, and would be racist (even if racist with an empirical basis). (4) Even if true as a statement of the past, the statement would still be problematic because people will look to it as justification for racism--when we generalize, we give ammunition to people who hate others based on their affiliation or skin color or religion or political party. (Okay, the latter might be okay if it's the Nazis.)
Re:Homosexuality (Score:4, Informative)
Homosexuality isn't correlated with the liberal/conservative spectrum. The only difference is that liberal homosexuals tend to be open about it. Conservative homosexuals tend to try to hide it from their wives and fellow church-goers.
Re:Liberalism in the US (Score:5, Informative)
I live in rural Arkansas, and you're full of shit.
I can drive down the road to Zinc, which is probably the nastiest, stereotypically hillbilly town you'll ever see. The poorest there live in run-down trailer houses, have three or four vehicles in the front yard in various states of repair, and they all have 30+ inch flatscreens on the wall. They are poor because of the choices they make, not because of lack of opportunity or ability.
Now, go do the same in rural Mexico. You'll see people living in dwelling constructed of native materials, with no electricity, running water, or sanitation. Further, there is near zero opportunity for them to improve their situation, short of move to another area with no financial support.
Seriously suggesting that "poor in America" is equivalent to "poor in Mexico" is so far from reality it's laughable. Try stepping outside your bias sometime, and see the real world for what it is.
Re:Liberalism in the US (Score:4, Informative)
Oddly, even the poorest US citizen has access to food, shelter, and far better health care than you do.
Really?
I make an ok amount, a little over $40k a year. I have a Wife and 2 kids. My wife is a teacher (got her degree in 08), and between the two of us, we weren't doing to badly. She graduated magna cum laude, but after getting laid off due to the economy, she can't find a job anywhere. There are so many teachers out of work subbing, she can only get about 1-3 days a week, making just enough to cover her student loan payments and gas to drive to work.
I get medical through my job (already the least expensive my company can find), my wife and kids had been getting it through hers, that just ran out. To add my wife and kids to my medical is between $900-$1000/month. That is nearly 1/2 of my net take home per month. There is NO WAY I can afford that, so as of right now, my wife and kids have no insurance.
I don't know what dream land you live in. There are a LOT of people worse off than I have it, and things are really bad right now for a lot of us.