Update on New York Times Poll on Public Sector Unions

I wrote previously about the latest survey from the New York Times: "There's something fishy about this poll ..." One thing that bothered me was how the Times indicated that 25 percent of those surveyed included "a public employee in their household." And that's not quite right, as Ed Morrissey indicates:

... 25% of respondents are either public employees or share a household with a public employee. Federal employees comprise less than 2% of the workforce at around 2 million. Overall, the US has 22.22 million government employees out of an employed workforce of 130.27 million, according to the Current Employment Statistics survey at the BLS. Government employment accounts for 17% of all workers, so a sample consisting of 25% public-sector households for a survey of adults (not registered voters) seems a little off.

Anyway, that's a fantastic analysis. And while I'm at it, folks might check out William Jacobson's work as well, focusing on Public Policy Polling, "Skewed Sample Data Used In PPP Wisconsin 'Do Over' Poll." Here again, the survey's oversampling Democratic households. What's amazing, though, is that if it wasn't for bloggers analyzing the findings, most folks wouldn't know otherwise (see U.S. News, for example, "New Polls Bring More Bad News for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker").