PPP summer fellow Curtis Labban conducted a poll about sports in North Carolina. The full results are here. This is his take on what they mean:
The results for this poll were not in all surprising, in that the Carolina Panthers and the Carolina Tar Heels are two of the most popular and lucrative franchises in the state, however I find it kinda sad that the Charlotte Bobcats and the Carolina Hurricanes get no love from the state.
When the Hornets were still in Charlotte they were one of the most loved teams in North Carolina, and also a team that received a lot of respect from abroad (I've seen many people wearing Hornets jerseys outside the state, and the country as well). It of course didn't follow that the love would be passed down to the Bobcats. One obvious reason is that the Bobcats were an expansion team and have had little overall success in the NBA so far, but one would think that the brand-new Bobcats Arena in downtown Charlotte might have drawn more crowds than it has. On the other end, the Carolina Hurricanes still get little respect from North Carolinians. No, hockey has not caught on in the South, and no, the Hurricanes don't do a great job of marketing the team across the state, but due to the success that the team has had in the past 10 years (2 Stanley Cup Finals appearances, with 1 Championship) one might think that people would start watching. The main reason is the lack of ability to even watch NHL games, since ESPN pulled out before the lockout, but I still find it surprising that 18% of the state didn't even know that they had a professional hockey team.
Other findings from the poll were that the state generally favors the Tar Heels over the Blue Devils, with 57% pulling for the Heels over the 32% that favored the Blue Devils. It also found, surprisingly, that only 40% of North Carolinians avidly support one or more Atlantic Coast Conference athletic program. Given the tremendous amount of pride that the ACC takes in its football and basketball success over the years, it seems as though many more people would claim to follow at least one team, be it their alma-mater or a school that is geographically close.
Very odd survey...
ReplyDelete1) The questioning is all over the place..
2) 82% knew that the state had a pro hockey team. this is fantastic!!!!! I don't find this surprising at all..
3) they should have stuck to pro sports for the survey for it to be a good comparison across the sports teams.
4) given 3, I would have liked to have seen them ask a similar question to Q4 about the carolina panthers, I bet the results would be similar.
5) Q1 is screwy. There are other schools in the state. Wake Forest, ECU, etc. The results on this question are not very meaningful. They should have stuck to pro sports. NASCAR in Charlotte, Panthers, Bobcats, or Hurricanes. They should of had a different question for college teams and asked about all of the major teams
6) 25% of the people that they surveyed were from the triad, yet no wake forest as stated above.
I find the survey to be poorly organized with the mix of pro and college.
I would have liked to have seen an initial question of 1) do you follow sports.. - 1 for yes, 2 for no. At this point drop any no folks out. Then for the yes folks layer in similar questions for each pro team. I think this method would prove to get a better understanding.. Then follow this up with a similar constructed poll for college.
I'm posting this same write up on that site.
I am just curious, but why no description of methodology that was used? How the participants in survey were selected? What was the margin of error?
ReplyDeleteDid your summer intern just picked up the phone, called random people all over North Carolina and than just tabulated the data?
Strange way of gathering information and providing results.
Worst poll I've ever seen. You can't compare between pro sports and college sports and then not include all colleges in the state. Leaving out NC State, ECU, and Wake doesn't help one bit.
ReplyDeleteNorth Carolina has 8.9 million people. A polling sample of 500 represents less than one one hundredth of one percent of the population. I wouldn't say that this can be deemed reliable in any way.
ReplyDeleteThe survey doesn't indicate how many people answered the whole survey without hanging up. It doesn't indicate how the respondants were selected. It doesn't suggest that there were any dummy questions to ensure that the respondant was paying attention or answering seriously. It doesn't even say whether the respondants were given the "no preference/I don't care about sports" option.
I agree with the others that there should have been more options with the college teams. They might have even (gasp) found similar results if they had asked "did you know that Duke has a football team" or "In what city is Wake Forest?"