Reader Michele Kerr points out something that I missed, from the odd op-ed about abortion and Democrats (the one I mentioned here):
* Six out of 10 Americans call themselves conservatives. Only a quarter of them are having abortions.
* A little more than one-third of Americans call themselves liberals. More than four in 10 are having abortions.
* This means that liberals are having one third more abortions than conservatives.
More than four in 10 liberal Americans are having abortions? Even if one reads this as “have had” abortions, if women are roughly 50% of liberals (not exactly right, but close), that would mean that 80% of liberal women — and 50% of conservative women — have had abortions. Can that possibly be right?
I don’t exactly follow the writer’s statistics, but it seems pretty clear that there’s at least one error somewhere in there. It might be, for instance, that the numbers refer to people who answered yes to “As far as you know, has anyone close to you had an abortion?” But “More than four in 10 know have had someone close to them have an abortion” would be very different than what the article says, which is “More than four in 10 are having abortions.”
UPDATE: Glen Whitman (Agoraphilia) has more.
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