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Cardiac Spill: Pennsylvania Votes!

Noted opinion polling firm Public Policy Polling has released a new major survey of Pennsylvanians. After some deep dive math stuff mostly involving "not doing anything," "misremembering one quarter of that book by Nate Silver I read last year," and "watching the NBA Finals," I'm ready to chat about the implications of the things that were discovered. Or just scour the report for "69%" and coast on that.

By P.B.S.
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

The Numbers: Even after he left for TCU, Jamie Dixon still had a +46 favorable margin (and only 3% disapproval). For perspective, Jay Wright, who won a national championship two months prior to this poll taking place, had a +71 favorable margin and 0% disapproval.

The Implication: For one thing, each win in the 2016 NCAA Tournament apparently nets you a little more than 4% of your fan base's love. But more importantly, apparently only 3% of basketball fans care about what you do in the NCAA Tournament. Something something "we are the 3%." Does anyone even watch the dang games?

Also once again proves that coaches can leave without acrimony, shockingly.

This wasn't part of the survey, but let's see the numbers I made up for this same poll regarding The Concept of Kevin Stallings:

Approve Nah
Disapprove 69%
No Opinion 31%

And then again for Actual Kevin Stallings:

Eh 100%

Elucidating!

~

The Numbers: Older people were less pessimistic about the 76ers than younger people.

The Implication: Old people are stupid and shouldn't be running the government.

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The Numbers: Penn State has one third of the sports fans in the state on lock.

The Implication: These numbers are spun by the "associated press" and the media that's been in the tank for Penn State all along. PPP declaring Penn State to be the winner of this poll this early, before these undecided late votes came in, was a breach of journalistic ethics. But we can still win.

First, there are 23% undecided or small-school fans. If we capture 100% of those, we have 36% and the plurality. We know from exit polls that undecided and late-deciding voters break towards Pitt, and that forward momentum is valuable in later contests. Even if we capture a mere 75% of these final-day-deciders, we can still form a coalition with Temple and Penn fans to control the conversation and prevent an outright victory for PSU. Now, I saw on Reddit the claims of a "confusing ballot" from Nitters who accidentally voted for Penn. I remind you that a vote is sacred and you are committed to the decision you made here. Of course, even if all else fails, we can always still swing a large number of the superfans if they can be thoroughly convinced that Pitt is the way forward, which, come on, obviously.

And then we win the nomination poll. Easy.

~

The Numbers: There were no questions about hockey in this poll.

The Implication: No one cares about hockey. If they did, there would be a question about it in this poll. (Of course, they would never bother to ask about hockey, because no one cares about hockey.)

There were no questions about Penn State's basketball coach (a scarecrow wearing a tracksuit) for similar reasons.

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The Numbers: People have opinions on sandwiches.

The Implication:

Meatball subs are garbage.

~

On a related subject:

The Numbers: Sheetz and Wawa are fun places to fill up AND fuel up!

The Implication:

Sheetz only won because no one asked about GetGo.

~

The Numbers: Most of the people who disapprove of Pat Narduzzi are Democrats. Most of the people who disapprove of Jamie Dixon are Republicans.

The Implication: There's no stylistic reason that this should break down this way, but things snap into focus once you look at the cross-tab for James Franklin:

Firstly, 18%! That's apparently off-the-charts when it comes to coaching disapproval! Did he forget to bring the artichoke dip to the Rotary Club meeting? Is there actually some guy named James Franklin State who they thought they were voting against?

But more importantly, there's again that Democrat/Republican split: more Democrats disapprove of Franklin and Narduzzi than Republicans. One has to assume that if opinion polling on Penn State's basketball coach (an old copy of Slam! Magazine they stole from a local library), there'd be more Republicans against him than Democrats. I only have one possible explanation for this: cultural warfare! You see, the origins of the political divide as it relates to popular sport in this country date back to the [EDITOR'S NOTE: No, no, that's okay.]

~

Let's dive into those Narduzzi numbers further:

The Numbers: Pat Narduzzi has a 45% approval rating, and a 0% disapproval rating among people who were interviewed via an online panel, which I assume involved a face-to-face interview.

The Implication: Cowards who disapprove of Coach Narduzzi are too ashamed of themselves to admit it to the face of another person. What could these cowards possibly disapprove of? I assume it's not "more wins" and "hope." I would've leaned towards "style of play," but my image of people who care about that are old Steelers fans who think the forward pass really ruined things, and Pitt right now is basically ten running backs and Ejuan Price. People who want more passing in football are hippies who don't vote. It's probably not a race thing, even though we all know Italians have a fiery mongrel blood unfit for polite society.

My point is, these people should also not be running the government. Who are these people, you ask?

Again -  old people must be stopped.

~

Alright, that wraps it for me. But before I go... you know I got ya.

A Parade of 69s

nice

nice

nice

niiiiiiiice

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