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To: Marc Tumin

While this is a good idea for a study its not well developed yet nor does it have controls.

For example take “Larry Craig” searches of the google news archives.

“Larry Craig” - 18900
“Larry Craig” Republican - 8670

“Larry Craig” sex - 2790
“Larry Craig” sex republican - 1910

So in all Larry Craig mentions over the last 20 years of news the word “republican” was mentioned 46%

But in stories where sex was also mention (and thus was likely to be a scandal story) “republican was mentioned 68% of the time.

Then you’d need to repeat this with various sex scandals from both parties. I don’t doubt there will be a difference but the articles implies its 20% vs 100% and that does not appear to be true.

Spitzer - 138000
Spitzer democrat 7850

spitzer sex 3630
spitzer sex democrat 390

Spitzer went from 6% to 11%


5 posted on 03/13/2008 3:40:26 PM PDT by gondramB (Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.)
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To: gondramB
So in all Larry Craig mentions over the last 20 years of news

If you really believe that Google News contains "all Larry Craig mentions over the last 20 years," then there's really no point in trying to take the rest of your analysis seriously.

9 posted on 03/13/2008 4:01:16 PM PDT by ReignOfError
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To: gondramB

One more thing — and I think we’re largely in agreement, so I’m not piling on — the methodology of using “sex” as a search term is a bit flawed. A lot of news stories would lead with “prostitution scandal” or “public restroom indecency charges” because they’re much more interesting phrases in a time when people have gotten pretty jaded about “sex scandals.”


17 posted on 03/13/2008 5:02:16 PM PDT by ReignOfError
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