Utah, PPP, Republican primary voters -- Romney or nothing?

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Please forgive me for asking this but really dude:

Is your head screwed on right?

You're pretty much saying that since Jim Matheson, a Democrat who is slightly to the left of Dan Boren, has a shot at beating Orin Hatch that if the GOP candidate isn't a Mormon Obama has a shot in hell of winning Utah?
Really dude?

that's our pbrower

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

It's a sample size of 406.  Out of a state of nearly 3 million.

FWIW, a sample size of 406 given a population of 3,000,000 means the margin of error of the poll is merely 4.9% (in the usual 95% confidence interval).

Sure, this could be an outlier, but even the 99% confidence interval is only +/- 6.4%.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Call me odd, but I treat polls with a sample size of under 1000 people as little more then fun numbers.  Pbrower's map is a fairly good indicator of why.

That is literally the equivalent of saying "Call me odd, but I don't believe in the validity of calculus."

That sounds great but think about it.  Road construction could conceivably block every single one of those people from going to the polls.

No, it conceivably could not. Such a thing would require a natural disaster whose scope is so terribly immense that the outcome of the 2012 presidential election is inconsequential.

Besides, even if the 1:100,000,000,000,000,000 chance of this did come up, it wouldn't matter -- these 406 people are a representative sample of 3,000,000. The 2,999,594 voters NOT affected by road construction would go to the polls and vote exactly the way the poll predicts, plus or minus 4.9% in the 95% confidence interval.